Full-time Clinical Supervisors
Executive Director and Clinical Professor of Law:
Jim Cavallaro
Jim Cavallaro joined the Human Rights Program in 2002, and is the Executive Director for HRP, and a Clinical Professor of Law. Professor Cavallaro is the former director
of the Global Justice Center, a Brazilian human rights NGO that he founded in 1999. Prior to that, he directed the Brazil office of Human Rights Watch, where he began as an Orville Schell fellow. A 1992 order of the coif graduate of Boalt Hall (University of California, Berkeley), where he was an editor of the California Law Review, he clerked for the Hon. Dolores K. Sloviter, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He is the author of numerous publications on human rights issues, including a dozen reports written for Human Rights Watch, the Global Justice Center, and the International Council on Human Rights Policy. After earning his A.B. from Harvard in 1984, Professor Cavallaro spent several years working with Central American refugees in El Paso and with political prisoners in Chile. Among his most recent works are “Public Enemy Number Two?: Rising Crime and Human Rights Advocacy in Transitional Societies,” 18 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 139 (2005) (with M. Mohamedou); “Less as More: Rethinking Supranational Litigation of Economic and Social Rights in the Americas,” 56 Hastings L.J. 217 (2004) (with E. Schaffer), and "Toward Fair Play: A Decade of Transformation and Resistance in International Human Rights Litigation in Brazil," 3 U. Chi. J. Int'l L. 481 (2002). Professor Cavallaro speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently.
Clinical Director and Lecturer on Law:
Tyler Giannini
Tyler Giannini is the Clinical Director of HRP, and a Lecturer on Law. Prior to coming to HLS, Tyler was co-director of EarthRights International (ERI), an organization at the forefront of efforts to link human rights and environmental protection. As a founder of ERI, Giannini spent the past decade in Thailand conducting investigative fact-finding efforts on human rights abuses in Burma and groundbreaking corporate accountability litigation. In particular, Giannini was co-counsel in the landmark Doe v. Unocal litigation. The case sought to hold the corporation accountable for abuses surrounding the Yadana gas pipeline project in Burma, and was settled in early 2005. Giannini holds graduate degrees in law and foreign policy from the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the law review. He is a member of the Virginia State Bar, and has co-authored several major publications including Total Denial Continues: Earth Rights Abuses along the Yadana and Yetagun Pipelines in Burma (2002) and Earth Rights: Linking the Quests for Human Rights and Environmental Protection (1999).
Lecturer on Law:
Bonnie Docherty
Bonnie Docherty is a Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic. She has also been a Researcher in the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) since 2001. She is an expert on international humanitarian law, particularly involving cluster munitions and civilian protection during war. For Human Rights Watch, she has conducted field research and written reports on cluster munition use in Lebanon (2006) and Afghanistan (2001-2002) and the civilian effects of armed conflict in Israel (2006), Israel/Gaza (2005), and Iraq (2003). Through writing and advocacy, she has participated in the campaign for a cluster munitions convention, which has culminated in international negotiations begun in 2007 to ban the weapon. At the Clinic, her areas of focus include international humanitarian law, freedom of expression, and human rights and the environment. Her publications on these topics include “‘More Sweat…Less Blood’: U.S. Military Training and Minimizing Civilian Casualties,” Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (2007); “The Time is Now: A Historical Argument for a Cluster Munitions Convention,” 20 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 53 (2007); “Reading between the ‘Red Lines’: The Repression of Academic Freedom in Egyptian Universities,” Human Rights Watch, vol. 17, no. 6(E) (2005), “Challenging Boundaries: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and International Environmental Law Protection,” 10 NYU Envtl. L.J. 70 (2001); “Defamation Law: Positive Jurisprudence,” 13 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 263 (2000); “Maine’s North Woods: Environmental Justice and the National Park Proposal,” 24 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 547 (2000). She received her A.B. from Harvard University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review, an executive editor for the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and an article editor for the Harvard International Law Journal. Before law school, she worked as a journalist for three years.
Lecturer on Law:
Sharanjeet Parmar
Sharanjeet Parmar is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and a
clinical fellow with the
Human Rights Program’s International Human Rights Clinic. Before joining the Human Rights Program, Parmar served as a trial attorney to the
Office of the Prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where her areas of focus included the use of child soldiers, gender crimes and economic crimes investigations. In addition to appearing in trials prosecuting alleged perpetrators of war crimes, Parmar directed and supervised field investigations and facilitated the
testimony of expert witnesses on crimes against children, gender-based violence, forensics and military operations. Parmar has also served as a legal aid manager
with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Sudan, initiating a community-based legal aid program in the south, and worked as a human rights lawyer in India
with the HIV/AIDS unit of the Lawyers Collective in Delhi and Mumbai. Parmar has spoken on panels for various national and international conferences on
HIV/AIDS-related issues, and is the author of numerous articles and reports on human rights, including the forthcoming “Child Witnesses and the Special Court of
Sierra Leone,” published by the Peace-building and Development Institute at American University’s School of International Service. Parmar is a member of the Law
Society of Upper Canada and holds an LL.B (‘99) from Dalhousie Law School, Halifax and an LL.M (‘06) in International Legal Studies from New York University
School of Law. Read a profile of Sharanjeet Parmar here.
Global Advocacy Fellow:
Ahmad Amara
Ahmad Amara is a Global Advocacy Fellow with the International Human Rights Clinic at HRP. He completed his Bachelor and Masters (Magna Cum Laude)
degrees in Law at Tel-Aviv University, where he also
served as a teaching assistant and a coordinator of the Street Law Clinic Program at the Faculty of Law. In 2005, he completed a second Masters degree in
International Human Rights Law at Essex University in the United Kingdom. His research and dissertation focused on the laws of armed conflicts, and the laws
of occupation. He is a Palestinian native of the town of Cana in the Galilee. In 2005, he co-founded a human rights organization, Karama (Arabic for “Dignity”),
in Nazareth where he served as a senior staff attorney. At Karama, advocating primarily on behalf of the
Palestinian minority in Israel, Amara filed and argued
several cases on education and housing rights before the Israeli Administrative Courts and the Supreme Court. Paralleling his record as a human rights scholar
and advocate, Amara has extensive experience as both an educator and group facilitator. After his training in group facilitation at Wahat-el-Salaam/Neve Shalom,
he facilitated and coordinated encounter meetings of Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians and Egyptians, within a diverse range of joint settings,
including What-el-Salaam/Neve Shalom, and the NIR School of the Heart to name a few.
Clinical Supervisor:
Susan Farbstein
Susan Farbstein is an Clinical Instructor at HRP. She joins HRP from the Cape Town office of the International Center for Transitional Justice, where her work was funded by a Harvard Kaufman Fellowship and Princeton-in-Africa. Prior to her time at ICTJ, she clerked for two years for the Honorable Morris E. Lasker of the Southern District of New York. She previously interned with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the ICTJ’s New York office, and has provided research assistance to the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Human Rights First. While in law school, she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and as a teaching assistant to Professor Laurence Tribe. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.Phil. in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a B.A. from Princeton University.
Part-time Clinical Supervisors
Academic Director:
Mindy Jane Roseman
Mindy Jane Roseman
is the Academic Director of the
Human Rights Program (HRP) at Harvard Law School and a Lecturer on Law. She is also an Instructor in the Department of Population and International Health
at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Before joining HRP, Roseman was Senior Research Officer at the International Health and Human Rights Program,
François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, HSPH. There, she researched and reported on a range of health and human rights issues, with special
focus on reproductive and sexual rights, including HIV and AIDS, and women’s and children’s rights. Before coming to Harvard she had been a staff attorney with
the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, in charge of its East and Central European program. After graduating from Northwestern University Law School in
1986, she clerked for Judge John F. Grady, Chief Judge, US District Court, Northern District, IL. She also holds a doctorate in Modern European History with a
focus on the history of reproductive health from Columbia University. Her publications include Beyond Words: Images from America’s Concentration Camps (co-authored
with Deborah Gesensway) (Cornell University Press 1987) and Women of the World ( East Central Europe): Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives (CRLP,
2000). Her current research projects include a critical evaluation of international reproductive health and rights policies, and a history of the eugenics and
human rights movements in France. Her most recent publication includes Reproductive Health and Rights: The Way Forward, (Laura Reichenbach co-editor)(forthcoming University of Pennsylvania Press 2009).
Clinical Supervisor:
Jiewuh Song
Jiewuh Song is an External Supervisor at HRP, where she will be co-supervising (with Tyler Giannini) a project on corporate accountability. Song has worked on the project since 2004, and is interested more broadly in the human rights and environmental implications of corporate development projects. Her other practice interests include rights abuses involving economic and status inequalities. Song holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and is working toward a doctorate degree in philosophy at Harvard. She has taught an undergraduate philosophy tutorial on human rights and has been awarded a Derek Bok Certificate for Distinction in Teaching.