Gregory Stanton

Gregory H. Stanton is the Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is the best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder (1999) and president of Genocide Watch, the founder (1981) and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder (1999) and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide. From 2007 to 2009 he was the President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

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 Institute 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. He 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), where 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.

Stanton's career at the State Department ended after an incident in 1998 in which he assaulted a video store owner in a dispute over a late fee, and drove his car at the man, knocking him through a plate glass window. Stanton then fled the country for Amsterdam and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He voluntarily returned to the United States after several days on the run, and was immediately arrested on his return to Dulles International Airport. In his trial he claimed psychological distress as a result of taking the wrong psychiatric medications, and he received no jail time.

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 Campaign to End Genocide, which includes 30 organizations in 11 countries, including the Minority Rights Group, the International Crisis Group, the Aegis Trust, Survival International, and the Genocide Intervention Network.

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.

Publications

Books

• The Eight Stages of Genocide: How Governments Can Tell When Genocide Is Coming and What They Can Do To Stop It (forthcoming, Woodrow Wilson Center Press)

Articles

• The Eight Stages of Genocide, 1996
• Emerging paradigms in Genocide Prevention, Politorbis, 2/2009
• Should President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan be charged and arrested by the International Criminal Court?, 2009
• The Precautionary Principle: A Brief for the Genocide Prevention Task Force, 2008
• Ethnic Cleansing Bleaches the Atrocities of Genocide, 2007
• Building An Anti-Genocide Regime, 2006
• Seeking Justice in Cambodia, 2006
• Proving Genocide in Darfur: The Atrocities Documentation Project and Resistance to Its Findings, 2006
• Factors Facilitating or Impeding Genocide (PDF)
• Early Warning in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity, 2005
• Facing Mass Murder in Zimbabwe, with Kevin Engle, August 2005
• Twelve Ways To Deny A Genocide, September 2004
• Eight Stages of Genocide Mural Painted in Belfast, September 2004
• Five Misconceptions About Using The Word Genocide
• Could the Rwandan Genocide Have Been Prevented?, June 2004
• Bloodbath in the Making: Darfur, Sudan, 2 April 2004
• The Genocide Prevention Center: A Proposal, March, 2004
• Genocide Watch: India, Those Who Own The Past Own The Future, Aegis Review, Winter 2003-2004, September 2003
• Perfection Is The Enemy of Justice, Phnom Penh Post, Bangkok Post 2003
• The Call, 2002
• How We Can Prevent Genocide, 2000
• War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity in East Timor: Options for an International Criminal Tribunal, August 1999
• End Imperial Impunity In These Times magazine, December 1999
• The Cambodian Genocide And International Law, 1993
• Blue Scarves and Yellow Stars, The Faulds Lecture, Warren Wilson College, 1987
• Cambodian Resurrection Yale Law Report, 1981

External links

• Biography at George Mason University website
• Biography, University of Mary Washington at the Wayback Machine (archived May 3, 2011)
• Bio, Poverty Action Conference, 2009
• Bio at Cambodian Genocide Group (CGG)
• Bio at Armenian Foreign Ministry