Rescue during Atrocity Crimes

Thursday, June 7, 2018
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
(Pacific)
William J. Perry Conference Room
Encina Hall, Second Floor, Central, C231
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Speaker: 
  • Zachary D. Kaufman
Abstract: Individuals (such as Paul Rusesabagina during the Rwandan genocide and Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg during the Holocaust) and groups (including Muslims during the Rwandan genocide, Danes during the Holocaust, and the White Helmets in Syria today) have sought to rescue others during genocides and other atrocity crimes. Even if rare, such rescue can be significant, resulting in hundreds or thousands of lives saved. This talk—drawing on case studies from the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and the ongoing conflict in Syria—will consider legal, political, and other approaches to promote rescue during such calamities.
 
Speaker bio: Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., is a Lecturer in Law and Fellow at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution, and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he taught at Yale and George Washington universities and held academic appointments at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School. Dr. Kaufman has served in all three branches of the U.S. government, including at the Supreme Court, the Departments of State and Justice, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has also served at three international war crimes tribunals (including the International Criminal Court), practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, and worked at Google. The author or editor of 3 books and over 40 articles and book chapters, Dr. Kaufman received his Ph.D. and M.Phil., both in International Relations, from Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar), his J.D. from Yale Law School (where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review), and his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University (where he was the student body president).