Tim Jon Semmerling, PhD, JD:
CLASS OF 1979
Grant Community High SchoolClass of 1979
Fox lake, IL
Intermediate SchoolClass of 1975
Lake villa, IL
Ballard SchoolClass of 1970
Niles, IL
Tim Jon's Story
A.S. College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL, 1981; B.S. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, Business 1984; Summer Arabic Programs, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, 1992 and 1993; M.A. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, Middle East Studies, 1994; Ph.D. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, Near East Languages and Cultures, 2000; J.D. DePaul University College of Law, Chicago, IL, Certificate in Criminal Law, 2009; Mitigation Program, The Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College, Chicago, IL, 2009; Death Penalty Seminar, Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College, DuBois, WY, 2010; the National Psychodrama Training Center, Rapid City, SD, 2011; and Advanced Arabic Summer Program, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon, 2013.
Master's thesis, entitled Underground University: Palestinian Response to Israeli-Imposed Closures of Universities in West Bank and Gaza Strip, 1987-1992 (1994), held at University of Texas at Austin. Doctoral dissertation honored "with distinction", entitled The Presentation of National Self: Semiotics of National Identity and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Postcards (2000), held at Indiana University and Harvard University. Field research for both publications conducted in Britain, France, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories.
Specialty in Palestinian/Israeli studies, film and visual studies, post-colonial studies, and criminal law. Research languages: Arabic, French, and Hebrew.
Member of the Illinois BAR since November 2009. Senior member and co-founder of The Mercury Endeavor, LLC, a criminal-defense mitigation firm helping to defend clients in state, federal, and military jurisdictions in the United States and abroad. Type themercuryendeavor and add .com.
Former Senior Research Fellow at the International Human Rights Law Institute (Chicago). Also, contributed research for the Capital Jury Project, a national academic project studying how juries decide death penalty cases.
Past member of DePaul University College of Law's Center for Justice in Capital Cases and a former law clerk for the Cook County Office of the Public Defender, Murder Task-Force Division and Felony Trial Division. Quondam Jeanne M. and Joseph P. Sullivan Human Rights Law Fellow working with the Iraq History Project (the largest collection of witness testimonies of human rights abuses under the Saddam Hussein regime). Served as a panel moderator at the 2008 International Criminal Court Conference (Chicago). Past Civil Rights Legal Research Fellow for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Chicago and Washington), investigating Department of Justice arrest announcements of Muslims after 9/11.
Author of Israeli and Palestinian Postcards: Presentations of National Self (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004) and "Evil" Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); both are used as college texts and held in over 660 public and academic libraries in the U.S. and abroad (e.g. British National, National Library of Israel, King Fahd National Library of Saudi Arabia, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and New York publics and Harvard, Hong Kong, Oxford, UCLA universities). See also Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Borders.com, etc. Postcards featured in Commentary of The Times (London) Literary Supplement (September 24, 2004). "Evil" Arabs received "Honorable Mention in the Category of Adult Non-Fiction, 2006 Book Award" from the Arab-American National Museum, received "Outstanding Academic Title, 2007" from the American Library Association and Choice Magazine, selected for exhibit at the Sharjah World Book Fair 2007 by the Sharjah Government's Department of Culture and Information in the United Arab Emirates, and listed on Saudi Aramco World's Suggested Reading List. Film and culture courses at New York University ("Imagining the Middle East"), George Mason University ("Ethics of Film and Media"), and CUNY-Brooklyn ("Cultures in Film") use "Evil" Arabs as required reading. Recently, Grant Community High School Library added "Evil" Arabs to...Expand for more
its holdings. In August 2008, "Evil" Arabs went into second print.
Additionally, author of article in the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 28, no. 2, pp. 207-223 (London: Routledge, 2008) entitled "Those 'Evil' Muslims! Orientalist Fears in Narratives of the War on Terror" - this scholarly piece exposes The Atlantic Monthly's series of articles that use racist images and Orientalist narratives about Muslims. Approximately 500 libraries throughout the world subscribe to the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Author of article in Western Legal History, 21, no. 1, pp. 55-82 (Pasadena: Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society, 2009) entitled "The John Marshall Clemens Law Ledger: A Legal Vestige of the American Frontier" - this is the first scholarly article to feature the recently recovered 1845-1847 law ledger of Mark Twain's father, which is now on display at the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal, MO. Approximately 200 libraries throughout the world subscribe to Western Legal History. And author of article in Voice for the Defense, 40, no. 8, pp. 43-46 (Austin: Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, 2011) entitled "Effectively Humanizing Our Client" - this is a book review of David Livingstone Smith's book Less Than Human, and considers how the Smith's theory is essential to for investigating, developing, and presenting mitigation in criminal cases.
Invited as guest speaker by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the University of London, and the University of East London at the "Framing Muslims" conference/workshop in London on December 5, 2009. There, discussed newly authored manuscript titled "Extraordinary 'Renditions': When Law and Pop Culture Co-Narrate the Bush Administration's Use of Extraordinary Rendition." "Framing Muslims" is an international scholarly effort exploring the way Muslims are depicted (and depict themselves) across a range of areas in political, legal, public and media discourses in Europe and America after 9/11. Invited as guest speaker by Southern Methodist University's Departments of Religious Studies and Asian Studies and the Human Rights Education Program as a Scott-Hawkins Lecturer, discussing "Extraordinary 'Renditions': When Law and Pop Culture Co-Narrate the Bush Administration's Use of Extraordinary Rendition." Also invited as guest speaker by the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum's Clemens Conference, discussing newly authored manuscript titled "Y-o-u-u Tom! Imagining and Imaging Tom Sawyer."
Faculty member at the Life in the Balance Conference of NLADA/NASAMS (Nashville, 2010; Orlando, 2011) and faculty member at the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty Defense College (Chicago, 2010). Presented paper at all three conferences entitled "Arab and Muslim Americans: Defense Considerations," which discusses how defense teams must attend to theories of homogenization, race, racialization, and the post-9/11 effects when serving Arab and Muslim American clients. Additionally, contributed findings of this paper in presentation to The Gerry Spence Trial Lawyers College (DuBois, 2010). Faculty member at the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System Training Conference (Norman, 2010) and faculty member at the Clarence Darrow Death Penalty College (Chicago 2011). Presented paper at both conferences entitled "Telling Our Clients' Stories: Mitigation and Investigation," which discusses the role of mitigation and the process of mitigation investigation in capital cases. Also faculty member at the Cook County Public Defender's Training Conference (Oakbrook, 2011; Oakbrook, 2012). Presented paper entitled "A New Era: Mitigation Without the Death Penalty" and co-authored paper with Kerry Max Cook entitled "Building a Better Attorney-Client Relationship."
Peer-reviewer of Nissim Rejwan's Arabs in the Mirror: Images and Self-Images from Pre-Islamic to Modern Times (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).
Co-authored manuscript with Dr. Eric Brahm is "An Overview of Post-Conflict Justice," for use by the Iraq History Project and the International Human Rights Law Institute (Chicago).
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