Beth Van Schaack
Beth Van Schaack is the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School where she teaches in the areas of international human rights, international criminal law, and human trafficking, among other subjects, and has been the Acting Director of the Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. She is also a Faculty Fellow with Stanford’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice.
Prior to returning to academia, she served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice of the U.S. Department of State under Secretaries Clinton and Kerry. In that capacity, she helped to advise the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy and Human Rights on the formulation of U.S. policy regarding the prevention of and accountability for mass atrocities, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. She has also spent time in private practice with Morrison & Foerster LLP and with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
She advises a number of human rights and international justice organizations, including: the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), the International Institute for Criminal Investigations (IICI), the National Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ), the International Justice Resource Center (IJRC), the Commission on International Justice & Accountability (CIJA), the Center for Justice & Accountability, Nuru International, and Accountability Council.
Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford University (B.A.); Yale Law School (J.D.); and University of Leiden School of Law (PhD). Her dissertation, entitled Imagining Justice for Syria, has been published by Oxford University Press.
Counter-Terrorism After 9/11 is a podcast series exploring how counter-terrorism has changed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001. In our fourth episode, we speak to Tom Parker, author of “Avoiding the Terrorist Trap: Why Respecting Human Rights is the Key to Defeating Terrorism”. This interview explores the different historical manifestations […]
In our podcast series ‘Counter-Terrorism After 9/11’ we speak to Bruce Hoffman. This interview examines how counter-terrorism has evolved, the impacts of 9/11, and the future of the Global War on Terror.
The United States National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism is built on a comprehensive threat assessment of domestic terrorism as ordered by President Biden, and prioritises far-right extremism. Although the conceptualisation contains certain flaws, the strategy acknowledges this rising threat in a comprehensive and evidence-based assessment. In this Policy Brief, we highlight the US Strategy […]