Zachary D. Kaufman

Zachary D. Kaufman

Senior Fellow
Zachary D. Kaufman

Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., focuses on international law and international relations, including U.S. foreign policy and national security; transitional justice; human rights; genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other mass atrocities; war crimes tribunals (including the International Criminal Court); social entrepreneurship; and the Great Lakes region of Africa (particularly Rwanda).

During the 2017-19 academic years, Dr. Kaufman is teaching at Stanford Law School. Previously, he taught in Yale University’s Department of Political Science and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He also has held academic appointments at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and New York University. He was a Carr Center Senior Fellow from 2016 to 2019.

Dr. Kaufman is the author or editor of three books: United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics (2016), Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities: Changing Our World (2012), and After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond (2009). He is also the author of over 40 articles and book chapters, most of which are available on his Social Science Research Network (SSRN) page. His work has been published by or is forthcoming in the Southern California Law ReviewYale Journal of International LawHarvard International Law JournalYale Law & Policy ReviewEmory International Law ReviewYale Human Rights & Development Law JournalJournal of International Criminal JusticeCriminal Law Forum, and other journals. He has also written for popular outlets, including Foreign PolicyForbes, the Boston Globe, and Just Security, and has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, such as National Public Radio, the BBC, and Voice of America.

Dr. Kaufman has served in all three branches of the U.S. government. He was a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow, a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a clerk for the Honorable Juan Torruella on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In addition, he served at the U.S. Departments of State and Justice. He also has served at three international war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Court (where he was the first American to serve) as well as the UN International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the Former Yugoslavia. In the private sector, Dr. Kaufman has practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and worked at Google.

Dr. Kaufman is a member of the Association of Marshall Scholars’ Board of Directors’ Executive Committee and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He 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 an Olin Fellow, Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review, Managing Editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, Articles Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, and co-founder and co-president of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs), and his BA in Political Science from Yale University (where he was the student body president).

 

Contact Information

p: 203-809-8500