Dr. Gregory H. Stanton

President, Genocide Watch; Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, George Mason University, Virginia, USA

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Biography

Gregory Stanton is currently a Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at George Mason University in Virginia, USA and the President of Genocide Watch, an organization aimed at predicting, preventing, stopping, and punishing the act of genocide and other forms of mass atrocities.

Dr. Stanton holds several academic degrees, including a Bachelor’s from Oberlin College, a Master’s in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, a Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School, and a Master’s and PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University Chicago. He was also a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Dr. Stanton began his career in human rights in the 1960s when he worked as Voting Rights worker in Mississippi and served as Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast. He later worked as the Church World/CARE Field Director in Cambodia, a legal advisor to RUKH, the Ukrainian Independence movement-a position for which he earned the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America's 1992 Man of the Year-, Chair of the American Bar Association Young Lawyer's Division Committee on Human Rights, and a member of the A.B.A.'s Standing Committee on World Order Under Law.

Dr. Stanton served as a Foreign Service Officer in the US State Department from 1992-1999, during which he drafted the UN Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central Africa Arms Flow Commission. Dr. Stanton was awarded the Foreign Service Association's W. Averell Harriman award for "extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage" in 1994 in recognition of these significant contributions to human rights.

Dr. Stanton has worked with and founded several genocide prevention organizations, including the Cambodian Genocide Project, the International Campaign to End Genocide, and Genocide Watch. He also served as Co-Chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court from 1999 to 2000, and as the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars from 2007 to 2009.

Prior to his current academic appointment, Dr. Stanton held several positions at various American universities, including: James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington, Professor of Justice, Law, and Society at American University, and Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. He was also a Fulbright Professor at the University of Swaziland.

Dr. Stanton is the author of several publications, including more than two dozen scholarly articles and the seminal book on identifying acts of Genocide, The Eight Stages of Genocide: How Governments Can Tell When Genocide Is Coming and What They Can Do to Stop It.