Mohsen al Attar

PhD (in progress) York University
LLM Stockholm University - 2004
LLM University of Texas - 2001

Contact details
Building 803, room 3.07
17 Eden Crescent
Auckland

Phone: +64 9 923 6524
Email: m.alattar@auckland.ac.nz

Available to students
Mondays 11am-12noon or by appointment

Visit Mohsen's personal website

Profile

"Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information."
Paulo Freire

Knowledge and experience are highly subjective concepts. Part of me would say that I possess both, having worked as a barrister in Canada and the United States on matters of domestic and international significance and having obtained multiple postgraduate degrees in intellectual property law, international law, and sociolegal studies. Yet, this stance is highly unsatisfactory for another part of me, the more dominant one, regards knowledge and experience as processes that humans engage in rather than objects we acquire. In other words, I do not perceive myself as a vessel that is steadily being filled but as a wheel in continuous motion propelled by the friction that knowledge and experience provoke. This perception informs my pedagogical philosophy and, by extension, my interactions with the students with whom I come in contact.

Returning briefly to the introductory quote from Paolo Freire, I must say that it is of immense relevance for it reveals not only my outlook on teaching but also my position on the purpose of education; in a single word, liberation. Education is a process intended to encourage the emergence of critical consciousness, of the individual and the collective, empowering us to intelligently consider our reality and opine on the levels of liberty we enjoy. Indeed, in any given circumstance, reality is the object of reflection and freedom the object of pursuit. Accordingly, our struggle to educate ourselves is in fact a struggle to understand reality, a necessary first step if we are to develop the ability - and the will - to intervene in the world and serve the cause of human emancipation. There is more.

Education, not unlike emancipation, is praxis; we reflect upon our world not simply to gain a greater understanding of it but to acquire the means to act upon it in wise and meaningful ways. We do so by searching for a complete view of reality, a view that reveals the connections between issues and challenges but also one that ascertains the way we exist in the world we study. Often times, the topics we discuss can appear remote leaving us with the impression that a chasm exists between education and everyday life. Professors therefore have the duty to personalise their lessons, to make them more real to students whilst affirming the importance of intellectual investigation. I have struggled to this very end in a variety of ways, sometimes by demystifying theory, other times by underscoring history, and yet at others by individualising the lessons and making them more relatable to students’ daily lives. By so doing, I believe that students can grasp how grand academic theory - which many professors espouse - can be applicable to everyday life - which all students participate in.

Ultimately, I believe that education is the quintessential exercise in freedom. By deepening our consciousness education permits us to transcend ourselves, to move forward with the awareness that even the very nature of humankind is susceptible to revolutionary transformation at the hands of an informed mind.

Research Interests

• International Law
• Intellectual Property Law
• Law & Development

Courses

• The Geo-Politics of International Law
• Intellectual Property Law and its Discontents
• Islamic Law
• Law & Society