Seven Myths About Afghanistan

Erik Jensen holds joint appointments at Stanford Law School and Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He is Professor of the Practice, Director of the Rule of Law Program at Stanford Law School, and an Affiliated Core Faculty at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.  Jensen began his international career as a Fulbright Scholar. He has taught and practiced in the field of law and development for 37 years and has carried out fieldwork in approximately 40 developing countries.  He lived in Asia for 14 years. Among his numerous publications, Jensen co-edited with Thomas Heller Beyond Common Knowledge:  Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law (Stanford University Press:  2003). At SLS, among other activities, he is the faculty director of the Afghanistan Legal Education Project which designed and built a law degree granting program at the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF).   In that project, Stanford Law students have written ten textbooks over the last twelve years critically analyzing the laws of Afghanistan. AUAF law faculty have served as a peer review committee. Jensen also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of AUAF. In the wake of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August, 2021 Jensen with two recent SLS alumnae launched a policy lab in the 2022 winter quarter entitled “Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis: Policy and Legal Pathways to Resettle High-Risk Afghans.”