Commentator Biographies

David Scheffer -
d-scheffer@law.northwestern.edu

David Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, Illinois. He teaches International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law. He was previously the U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues (1997-2001) and led the U.S. delegation in U.N. talks establishing the International Criminal Court.

During his ambassadorship, Scheffer negotiated and coordinated U.S. support for the establishment and operation of international and hybrid criminal tribunals (including the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia) and U.S. responses to atrocities anywhere in the world. He also headed the Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group. During the first term of the Clinton Administration, Scheffer served as senior adviser and counsel to the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Dr. Madeleine Albright, and served from 1993 through 1996 on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council.

Scheffer has published extensively on international legal and political issues and appears regularly in the national and international media.

Scheffer is a member of the New York and District of Columbia Bars, the American Society of International Law (formerly serving on the Executive Council), the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Chicago Committee of Human Rights Watch, and is the former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Law Students Association (2004-2008).

Youk Chhang - dccam@online.com.kh

As Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), Youk Chhang leads Cambodian efforts to collect and organize data on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge period.

The Documentation Center of Cambodia was founded shortly after the U.S. Congress passed the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act in 1994. With this legislation, the Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigation in the U.S. State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs was established, which then provided a grant to Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) to conduct research, training and documentation relating to the Khmer Rouge regime.

The CGP founded the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh in 1995 and DC-Cam became an independent Cambodian research institute in 1997, with Youk Chhang as its director. Since 1997, DC-Cam has continued its extensive research and documentation activities. These activities are intended both to record the history of the Khmer Rouge regime for future generations and to compile and organize information that might serve as evidence in any legal accounting for the crimes of the regime. As DC-Cam states, its objectives represent its focus on "memory and justice, both of which are critical foundations for the rule of law and genuine national reconciliation in Cambodia."

Youk Chhang is a survivor of Cambodia's "killing fields" although lost many of his family members. Eventually moving as a refugee to the U.S., he returned to Cambodia in the early 1990s to work towards reconstruction and a new life for his country. He was highlighted as one of Time's Top 100 People Who Shape Our World, by Senator John Kerry.

2007 Time Magazine profile of Youk Chhang

2006 Time Asia profile of Youk Chhang

John D. Ciorciari - john_ciorciari@post.harvard.edu

John D. Ciorciari is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. His teaching and research focus on international law and politics, particularly in Asia. Since 1999, he has been a pro bono legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which promotes memory and justice with respect to the abuses of the Khmer Rouge regime. He is the author of The Limits of Alignment (Georgetown University Press, 2010), which examines foreign policy dilemmas facing Southeast Asian states as they navigate relations with the great powers and co-editor with Anne Heindel of On Trial: The Khmer Rouge Accountability Process (Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2009).

Before joining the Michigan faculty, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Asia-Pacific Research Center and Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. He served as a policy official covering Asia in the U.S. Treasury Department between 2004 and 2007. He has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and attorney at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell. He is an Asia 21 fellow of the Asia Society and term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds an A.B. and J.D. from Harvard and M.Phil. and D.Phil. from Oxford.

David Chandler - dpchandler@mac.com

David Chandler, an emeritus professor of History at Monash University in Australia, has written seven books about Cambodian history and politics, the latest of which (2007) is the 4th edition of A History of Cambodia, originally published in 1983. Chandler is currently an honorary research associate at the Monash Asia Institute.

Alex Hinton - ahinton@andromeda.rutgers.edu

Alex Hinton is Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide (California, 2005) and three edited collections: Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide (California, 2002), Genocide: an Anthropological Reader (Blackwell, 2002), and Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions (Cambridge, 1999). He is currently working on several other book projects, including two edited volumes related to genocide, Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation and Local Justice, and a single-authored book on the politics of memory and justice in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide. Professor Hinton lived in Cambodia from 1994-1995 and continues to return there to visit and do research.

Ronald Slye - slye@seattleu.edu

Ronald C. Slye is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of International and Comparative Law Programs at Seattle University School of Law, where he teaches in the area of public international law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and transitional justice. He is also Director of the Center for Global Justice at Seattle University, and Honorary Professor on the law faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and books in the areas of international human rights law, poverty law, and environmental law, and is currently writing a book on the legitimacy of amnesties granted to individuals responsible for gross violations of human rights. He most recently published the casebook, International Criminal & Its Enforcement (Foundation Press, 2007) (with Beth Van Schaack). From 1997 to 2000 he was a consultant to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, advising them on issues of human rights and international law. From 1993 to 1996 he was the Associate Director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, and co-taught Yale's international human rights law clinic. Professor Slye received a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989, a M.Phil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge in 1985, and a B.A. in History from Columbia University in 1984.

Elizabeth Becker - ebh47@msn.com

Elizabeth Becker is the author of "When the War Was Over; Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge," which won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award prize and has been translated into Khmer and French. She began covering Cambodia during the war in 1972 and was one of two journalists to visit the country while the Khmer Rouge were in power and to interview Pol Pot, reporting that was honored by the Overseas Press Club. As a New York Times Washington correspondent, she covered international economics, defense and foreign affairs. She was Senior Foreign Editor of National Public Radio and began her career at the Washington Post. She graduated in South Asian Studies from the University of Washington and is the author of "America's Vietnam War." She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a fellow at the German Marshal Fund.

James A. Goldston - jgoldston@justiceinitiative.org

James A. Goldston is executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), an operational program of the Open Society Institute that promotes rights-based law reform and builds legal capacity worldwide. Before heading the OSJI, James Goldston was legal director of the Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center, where he developed and managed civil rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights, United Nations treaty bodies, and domestic courts in 15 European countries. He also served as Director General for Human Rights of the Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, where he oversaw monitoring, reporting and individual protection activities nationwide. He also spent five years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York prosecuting organized crime.

A graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Law School, Goldston has written widely on issues of human rights and racial discrimination. He has engaged in law reform fieldwork and investigated rights abuses in more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Tracey Gurd - tgurd@justiceintiative.org

Tracey Gurd serves as the junior legal officer for the OSJI. She has previously worked as a legal academic, a journalist and also as an international policy advisor for the Australian government in both Australia and Central Europe. Gurd is the joint editor of a forthcoming academic collection on women and armed conflict.

Heather Ryan

Heather Ryan serves as Monitor for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT) for the OSJI. She works with all branches of the court and the NGO community to help ensure that the court meets international justice and human rights standards. She monitors and reports on the pretrial and trial process; liaises with all organs of the Tribunal to assess needs that the Justice Initiative or others could fulfill; liaises with NGOs and journalists; and engages in advocacy, outreach, and training on the KRT as appropriate.

Ryan‘s previous experience includes work with the Coalition for International Justice and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Jaya Ramji-Nogales - jaya.ramji-nogales@temple.edu

Jaya Ramji-Nogales is an Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University's Beasley School of Law, where she teaches Transitional Justice and Evidence. She holds a JD from the Yale Law School and an LLM, with distinction, from the Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Ramji-Nogales has been a member of the Board of Advisors to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam) since 2004. Her first research project with the DC-Cam, conducted in 1997, was published in the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs as Reclaiming Cambodian History: The Case for a Truth Commission (2000). More recently, Professor Ramji-Nogales co-edited, with Professor Beth Van Schaack, a volume of essays entitled Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass Violence before the Cambodian Courts (Mellen Press 2005).

Beth Van Schaack - BVanSchaack@scu.edu

Beth Van Schaack is Assistant Professor of Law with Santa Clara University School of Law, where she teaches and writes in the areas of human rights, transitional justice, international criminal law, public international law, and civil procedure. She is the co-author of International Criminal Law & Its Enforcement (Foundation Press 2007) (with Ron Slye) and co-editor of a volume of essays entitled Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass Violence before the Cambodian Courts (Mellen Press 2005) (with Jaya Ramji).

Prof. Van Schaack joined the law faculty from private practice at Morrison & Foerster LLP. As a Senior Associate at "MoFo", Prof. Van Schaack practiced in the areas of commercial law, intellectual property, international law, and human rights. In particular, she was trial counsel for Romagoza v. Garcia, a human rights case on behalf of three Salvadoran refugees that resulted in a plaintiffs' award of $54.6 million. She was on the criminal defense team for John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban."

Prior to entering private practice, Prof. Van Schaack was Acting Executive Director and Staff Attorney with The Center for Justice & Accountability, a non-profit law firm in San Francisco dedicated to the representation of victims of torture and other grave human rights abuses. She was also with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia. Since 1995, she has served as a legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Prof. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School.

Raymund Johansen

Raymund Johansen is an attorney and former Asylum Officer with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services who has been associated with the Documentation Center of Cambodia since 1999. Pursuant to his work with the DC-Cam, Mr. Johansen spent a year in residence at the Center in 2000, analyzing the probative value of some of the Center's documentary holdings with respect to crimes against humanity perpetrated under the Democratic Kampuchea regime. He currently serves as Rule of Law Advisor with the United States Agency for International Development in Afghanistan.

Anne Heindel – anne.heindel@gmail.com

Anne Heindel is a Legal Advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). She advises the Center's Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Response Team and manages its visiting scholar program. Prior to joining DC-Cam, she was Assistant Director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University, Washington College of Law, where she supervised legal research and writing on new questions of humanitarian and international criminal law for clients including the International Criminal Court, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the ECCC, and the Special Panels for the prosecution of serious crimes in East Timor. She has also worked for several human rights NGOs. Heindel holds an LL.M in international studies from New York University School of Law and a J.D. from the University of California at San Francisco, Hastings College of the Law.

Gregory H. Stanton

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton is the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is President of Genocide Watch and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide. He is President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

After practicing international law with Foley and Lardner in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dr. Stanton became a Law Professor at Washington and Lee University in 1985. He was a Fulbright Professor of Law at the University of Swaziland in 1989 - 1990. He was a legal advisor to the Ukrainian independence movement from 1988 through 1992, and helped draft the post-communist Ukrainian constitution.

Dr. Stanton served in the State Department from 1992 to 1999, where he wrote the United Nations resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, as well as many other resolutions on human rights and international peacekeeping.

Dr. Stanton was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2001 – 2002. He has been the James Farmer Visiting Professor of Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington since 2003.

Dr. Stanton founded the Cambodian Genocide Project in 1981. He has worked for 26 years to create a tribunal to try the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. From 2003 – 2007 he has assisted the Cambodian government’s Tribunal Task Force by drafting rules of procedure and evidence and training Cambodian judges and prosecutors for the tribunal.

In 1999, Dr. Stanton founded Genocide Watch and the International Campaign to End Genocide, a coalition of 30 non-governmental organizations in eleven countries on five continents dedicated to preventing, stopping, and punishing genocide. In 2007, he co-founded the inter-religious Alliance to Abolish Genocide.

Stanton has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He has contributed scores of chapters and articles to books and scholarly publications. He is currently completing a book, entitled The Eight Stages of Genocide to be published by the Woodrow Wilson Center Press.

Tyler Nims

Tyler Nims is a third year student at the Northwestern University School of Law and has worked on the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor since 2007.  He spent the summer of 2008 at the law firm of Latham & Watkins in New York City and the summer of 2007 interning in Chambers at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.  He is a member of the Northwestern University Law Review.

Laura MacDonald

Laura MacDonald is a Phnom Penh-based consultant to the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law. Laura previously practiced law at Latham & Watkins in New York and served in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs and Domestic Policy Council. Laura holds a B.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University and a J.D. with an international law concentration from Northwestern University School of Law, where she was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology and a member of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Team. Laura is a member of the New York Bar.