TIM JON SEMMERLING holds a Ph.D.
in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from Indiana University, an M.A.
in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and a J.D.
with certificate in criminal law from DePaul University’s College of Law.
He has trained at the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College Mitigation Program (Chicago, Illinois), the Trial Lawyers College Death Penalty Seminar (DuBois, Wyoming), and the National Psychodrama Training Center (Black Hills, South Dakota), and he holds BAR membership in the State of Illinois.Dr. Semmerling has served as Jeanne M.
and Joseph P.
Sullivan Human Rights Fellow, working with the Iraq History Project; Research Fellow at The Council of American-Islamic Relations, researching the arrests of Muslims after 9/11; Senior Research Fellow for the International Human Rights Law Institute, providing sentencing research in an enemy-combatant case in the 7th Circuit; Faculty Member for the National Legal Aid and Defense Association (NLADA) and the National Alliance of Sentencing Advocates and Mitigation Specialists (NASAMS), the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, and the Cook County Public Defender's Office advocating mitigation for capital and non-capital cases, improvements in attorney-client relations, and cultural considerations for Muslim and Arab American defendants; and Guest Speaker at the University of London’s Framing Muslims Project and Southern Methodist University’s Scott-Hawkins Lecture Series, speaking about the War on Terror, law, and popular culture.
