Dr. Lihi Yona

Dr. Lihi Yona is an Associate Professor of Law and Criminology at the University of Haifa. She completed her doctoral studies at Columbia Law School and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. Prior to joining the University of Haifa faculty, she was a Young Scholar at the Israel Democracy Institute and a Research Fellow at. Columbia Law School.

Dr. Yona’s research examines the intersection of law, identity, and structural inequality, with particular focus on antidiscrimination, prison law, gender, and racial justice. Her doctoral dissertation explored liminally-recognized groups and their position within equality and dignity frameworks. Her scholarly work spans multiple areas including employment discrimination, trans rights in carceral systems, and the role of racial identity in state institutions. Her research has been published in leading legal journals including the UCLA Law Review, Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, and Michigan Journal of Race and Law.

Dr. Yona has received several prestigious accolades for her academic work, including the 2024 Alon Fellowship, honorable mention for the 2023 Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship, and the Jeffrey Williams Memorial Prize for Critical Rights Analysis from Columbia University.

• Antidiscrimination law
• Race and Mizrahi Legal Studies
• Gender and queer theory
• Prison law and prisoners’ rights

• Itamar Mann & Lihi Yona, Defending Jews From the Definition of Antisemitism, 71 UCLA Law Review, 1150 (2024)
• Lihi Yona & Tammy Harel Ben-Shahar, “Trashing” Whiteness: Race Consciousness and the Failed Promise of Merit, 56 Arizona State Law Journal, 1075 (2024)
• Lihi Yona, Identity at Work, 43(1)Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, 139 (2022).
• Lihi Yona, Coming Out of the Shadows: The Non-Western Critique of Dignity,27(1) Columbia Journal of European Law, 34 (2021).
• Lihi Yona & Itamar Mann, The Executioners: Mizrahi Jews and State Violence in Israel,23 Law and Government in Israel, 59 (2021).
• Lihi Yona & Ido Katri, The Limits of Transgender Incarceration Reform,31(2) Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 201 (2020).
• Lihi Yona, Whiteness at Work, 24(1) Michigan Journal of Race and Law, 111 (2018).

• Alon Fellowship (2024)
• Azrieli Early Career Faculty Fellowship (honorable mention) (2023)
• Halpern Award for socially engaged legal writing (honorable mention) (2018)
• Jeffrey Williams Memorial Prize for Critical Rights Analysis, Columbia University (awarded to one student each year) (2014)
• Norman E. Alexander Scholarship, Columbia University (2013)
• Graduate Student Scholarship for Academic Excellence, awarded by the Graduate Studies Authority and the Faculty of Humanities, University of Haifa (2010)
• Dean of Students Scholarship for Academic Honors, University of Haifa (2009 & 2010)
• Wili Aptowitzer Foundation Scholarship for extraordinary achievements in first year of law school (awarded to the year’s two top-ranked students) (2009)