Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights
Astha Sharma Pokharel is a Clinical Teaching Fellow at the UC Berkeley School of Law International Human Rights Law Clinic. Prior to joining the clinic, Astha was a Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights. There, she worked to defend the constitutional rights of advocates for justice in Palestine, and advocates for environmental justice, including in cases such as Bronner v. Duggan, defending an individual who was sued for the American Studies Association’s decision to endorse the call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and Energy Transfer Partners v. Greenpeace, defending an organizer who was sued by a pipeline company for resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline. In the spring and summer of 2020, she was on legal teams challenging the continued detention of immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic in cases such as Dada v. Witte. Astha grew up in Rome, Italy, and calls Kathmandu, Nepal home. Prior to moving to the U.S. in 2014, Astha worked on gender justice issues in Kathmandu.