Plenary Session II featuring a keynote address by Aryeh Neier and moderated by Sarah Mendelson.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is hosting a two-day conference featuring high-profile leaders, experts, and opinion-makers to develop a shared international agenda for protecting civilians from terrorist violence. In addition to examining government responses and legal structures, the conference will consider how local communities and international partners can transform the enabling environment that can intimidate local actors into silence or acquiescence. Topics will include the impact of new media tools, changes in international humanitarian law, the evolution of terrorist tactics, the proliferation of suicide bombings, and innovative approaches to protecting civilians- CSIS
Bio
Sarah Mendelson
Sarah Mendelson is the director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at CSIS and a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program. Before joining CSIS, Mendelson taught international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. From 1997 to 2000, she directed a collaborative study, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, evaluating the impact of Western democracy assistance to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. From 1995 to 1998, she was an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Albany, and from 1997 to 1998, she was a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
She has been a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and Princeton University’s Center of International Studies. Mendelson serves on the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the editorial board of International Security. She is the author of Barracks and Brothels: Peacekeepers and Human Trafficking in the Balkans and Changing Course: Ideas, Politics and the Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mendelson received her B.A. in history from Yale University in 1984 and her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1993.
Aryeh Neier
Aryeh Neier is the President of the Open Society Institute. Prior to joining the Institute in 1993, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.
Before that, he spent 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including eight years as national Executive Director. Neier has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University for more than a dozen years.
Neier has contributed more than 150 op-ed articles in newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune, and articles that have appeared in newspapers in many countries.
Author of six books, he has also contributed chapters to more than 20 others. Neier, a naturalized American, was born in Nazi Germany and became a refugee at an early age. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of six honorary doctorates, the American Bar Association's Gavel Award and the International Bar Association's Rule of Law Award.