PROGRAM

On December 7, 2010, Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp came to Roosevelt House for a round-table discussion with faculty and students as part of our Conversations on Human Rights and International Justice series. The discussion series brings leading scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights and international justice to Hunter for informal conversation with groups of Hunter faculty, students and invited guests. The series is moderated by Dr. Jonathan Fanton, Franklin D. Roosevelt Visiting Fellow at Roosevelt House.

About the Speaker:

Stephen J. Rapp is Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. Prior to his appointment, he served as Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone beginning in January 2007, leading the prosecutions of former Liberian President Charles Taylor and other persons alleged to bear the greatest responsibility for the atrocities committed during the civil war in Sierra Leone. During his tenure, his office achieved the first convictions in history for sexual slavery and forced marriage as crimes against humanity, and for attacks on peacekeepers and for recruitment and use of child soldiers as violations of international humanitarian law.

From 2001 to 2007, Mr. Rapp served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Mr. Rapp was United States Attorney in the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001, where his office won historic convictions under the firearms provision of the Violence Against Women Act and the serious violent offender provision of the 1994 Crime Act. He received his BA degree from Harvard College in 1971. He attended Columbia and Drake Law Schools and received his JD degree from Drake in 1974.