Gregory Stanton

Early life and academic background

Stanton comes from the lineage of women's suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery leader. He worked as a voting rights worker in Mississippi, a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast, and as Church World Service/CARE Field Director in Cambodia in 1980.

Stanton is Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia. From 2003 to 2009 he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He has been a Law Professor at Washington and Lee University, American University, and the University of Swaziland. He has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2001–2002).

Career

Stanton was a law professor at Washington and Lee University from 1985 to 1991, was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Swaziland, and was a professor of Justice, Law, and Society at the American University. From 2003 - 2009, he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Stanton founded the Cambodian Genocide Project at Yale in 1981 and since then has been a driving force to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice. Stanton was deeply involved in the U.N.-Cambodian government negotiations that have brought about the creation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, for which he has drafted internal rules of procedure and evidence.

Stanton served in the State Department (1992–1999). At the State Department he drafted the United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. He also drafted the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations resolutions that helped bring about an end to the Mozambique civil war. In 1994, Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association's prestigious W. Averell Harriman award for "extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage," based on his dissent from U.S. policy on the Rwandan genocide. He wrote the State Department options paper on ways to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.

In January 1998, following a dispute over a late video rental late fee, Stanton was involved in a physical altercation with a McLean, Virginia, store owner, and ran his car into the man. Stanton fled to Amsterdam using his diplomatic passport, but later returned to the U.S. and turned himself in. Stanton paid the man $30,000 in damages and spent 40 days in jail; he was given a suspended sentence with community service for malicious wounding and destruction of property. Stanton apologized to the victim and said that the incident occurred in a bout of temporary insanity caused after he was given the wrong medication for manic depression; "two psychiatrists testified on Stanton's behalf that the drug impaired his judgment and caused him to act impulsively."

In 1999 Stanton founded Genocide Watch. From 1999 to 2000, he also served as Co-Chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court. Genocide Watch is the Chair and Coordinator of the International Alliance to End Genocide, which includes 50 organizations in 24 countries, including the Minority Rights Group, the International Crisis Group, the Aegis Trust, and Survival International.

Before he joined the State Department, Stanton was a legal advisor to Rukh, the Ukrainian independence movement, work for which he was named the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America's 1992 Man of the Year. He was the 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.

In 2007, Stanton was elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, to serve until 2009. He served as First Vice President of the Association from 2005 to 2007.

Books