For the 2009-2010 Academic Year, the Human Rights Program will include a Faculty Advisory Committee led by William P. Alford, Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and Gerald L. Neuman, J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law. Additional faculty and staff bios appear below.
Executive Director and Clinical Professor of Law:
Jim Cavallaro
Jim Cavallaro is the Executive Director for HRP, and a Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. 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 "Reevaluating Regional Human Rights Litigation in the Twenty-First Century: The Case of the Inter-American Court," 102 American Journal of International Law 768 (2008) (with S. E. Brewer); "Looking Backward to Address the Future? Transitional Justice, Rising Crime, and Nation-Building," 60 Maine Law Review 461 (2008); “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.
Academic Director and Lecturer on Law:
Mindy Jane Roseman
Mindy Jane Roseman is the Academic Director of the Human Rights Program, and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. Before joining HRP, Roseman was an Instructor in the Department of Population and International Health at Harvard School of Public Health, and a Senior Research Officer at the International Health and Human Rights Program, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health. Roseman 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, U.S. 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 Reproductive Health and Rights: The Way Forward (Laura Reichenbach, co-editor), Interrogations, Forced Feedings and the Role of Health Professionals (co-edited with Ryan Goodman, Harvard University Press 2009), Women of the World (East Central Europe): Laws and Policies Affecting Their Reproductive Lives (CRLP, 2000), and Beyond Words: Images from America’s Concentration Camps (co-authored with Deborah Gesensway) (Cornell University Press 1987). Her current research projects include an assessment of international legal norms and their relationship to sexual health, and the effect litigation has had on the implementation of the right to health. She is also interested in the manifestation of gender bias in social science research and its translation into government policies and programs.
Clinical Director and Lecturer on Law:
Tyler Giannini
Tyler Giannini is the Clinical Director of HRP, and a Lecturer on Law at
Harvard Law School. 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).
Clinical Instructor and 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 and Clinical Litigation Fellow:
Susan Farbstein
Susan Farbstein is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and the Clinical Litigation Fellow at HRP. Her work focuses on litigation under the Alien Tort Statute and on issues related to transitional justice, particularly in Southern Africa. Through the Clinic, she is co-counsel on In re South African Apartheid Litigation, a suit against multinational corporations for aiding and abetting human rights violations in South Africa, and Mamani v. Sanchez-Berzain, which brings claims against the former president and defense minister of Bolivia related to a 2003 massacre of civilians. She also assisted in litigating Wiwa v. Shell, which charged Shell with complicity in the torture and killing of non-violent Nigerian activists in the mid-1990s, and which settled for $15.5 million in 2009. Her most recent publication is Prosecuting Apartheid-Era Crimes? A South African Dialogue on Justice (with Tyler Giannini). Before joining HRP, Farbstein worked at the Cape Town office of the International Center for Transitional Justice, where her position was funded by a Harvard Kaufman Fellowship and Princeton-in-Africa. Prior to her time at ICTJ, she clerked for the Honorable Morris E. Lasker of the Southern District of New York. She previously held internships 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.
Communications Director:
Michael Jones
Michael Jones is the Communications Director of HRP. He is also a full-time blogger with Change.org, a social media and news site, where he edits their Gay Rights section. He is the former Communications Director of Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic social justice organization with offices in Washington and Pennsylvania, where he coordinated media outreach, political communication, publications and website design. He previously worked as a field organizer for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone in Minnesota, and served on the board of Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Photomedia Center, and continues to write freelance articles for national secular and religious publications. Jones has an M.A. in Magazine, Newspaper and Online Journalism from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and a B.A. in Social Work and Political Science from Mercyhurst College.
Financial Manager:
Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Corrigan is the Financial Manager of HRP. Prior to coming to Harvard, she served as the Director of Finance and Administration for Community Action Agency of Somerville. CAAS is a non-profit agency designated as the anti-poverty agency for the City of Somerville, dedicated to the reduction of poverty among local families and individuals. In that role she managed a budget of Federal, Sate and local grants in excess of $5 million dollars. Maureen attended Bentley College where she studied accounting.
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.
Skirball Fellow and Clinical Supervisor:
Deborah Popowski
Deborah Popowski is the Skirball Fellow for Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, where she will work on clinical and academic projects focusing on the role of medical professionals in human rights violations, particularly harsh interrogations and torture. She was previously a fellow with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where she worked to develop alternative forms of accountability for U.S. health professionals involved in torture, both in domestic and foreign settings. Her past experience includes work with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the UN Committee against Torture, and Justiça Global, a Brazilian non-governmental organization that litigates before the Inter-American system of human rights.
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.
Program Associate:
Annie Berndtson
Annie Berndtson is the Program Associate for HRP. She graduated from Harvard in 2008 with a B.A. in Psychology. She is fluent in
Spanish and worked at Boston Children’s Hospital during college as an advocate and interpreter for low-income families and
their behaviorally disabled children. She is certified to teach English as a Second Language and has lived abroad in Mexico
and Spain.