About CSHR

  • About CSHR
  • Staff
  • Open Positions
  • Internships
  • Board of Directors
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CSHR Staff

Elazar Barkan
Co-Director

Elazar Barkan is a professor of international and public affairs and the director of the Human Rights Concentration at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. He also founded and co-directs the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation (IHJR) in The Hague. Professor Barkan served on CSHR’s board of directors before becoming CSHR’s co-director in 2007 and director in 2008. Previously, Professor Barkan served as chair of the History Department and the Cultural Studies Department at the Claremont Graduate University, where he was the founding director of the Humanities Center. Professor Barkan is a historian by training and received his PhD from Brandeis University. His research interests focus on human rights and on the role of history in contemporary society and politics and the response to gross historical crimes and injustices. His human rights work seeks to achieve conflict resolution and reconciliation by bringing scholars from two or more sides of a conflict together and employing historical methodology to create shared narratives across political divides. Much of this work is done through the IHJR, which promotes reconciliation in societies divided by historical conflicts and human rights abuses. Professor Barkan’s other current research interests include refugee repatriation, comparative analysis of historical commissions, shared sacred sites, and the question of human rights impact, specifically with regard to redress and transitional justice. His recent books include The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (2000); Claiming the Stones/Naming the Bones: Cultural Property and the Negotiation of National and Ethnic Identity, (an edited volume with Ronald Bush, Getty, 2003); and Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (an edited volume with Alexander Karn, Stanford University Press, 2006).

Yasmine Ergas
Associate Director

Ms. Ergas, a lawyer and sociologist who also serves as an adjunct associate professor of International Law and International Human Rights Law at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, is a graduate of the Universities of Sussex and Rome and Columbia Law School. Her experience spans research, teaching and legal practice, program-building and administration, and human rights activism. She is a former member of the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; fellow of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University; and a Pembroke Fellow of Brown University. Among other honors, she has been awarded fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation and the Italian Consiglio Nazionale della Ricerca. Ms. Ergas served on the staff of the Social Science Research Council where she developed programs focused on the social consequences of HIV/AIDS, staffed the Committee on Western Europe, and administered major fellowship programs. She has been a consultant to key international organizations, including the OECD and UNESCO. More recently, she served as the coordinator of, and an adviser to, the gender program of the Millennium Village Project. Ms. Ergas has been involved in Human Rights Watch for many years, chairs the advocacy committee of its New York Committee, and attended the signing of the Convention on Cluster Munitions as part of the HRW delegation in Copenhagen in December 2009. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Rights Practice, the Scientific Council of the Centro di Ricerca sul Sistema Sud e il Mediterrraneo Allargato of Universita’ Cattolica di Milano, and the board of New York City Global Partners. Ms. Ergas has published extensively, focusing particularly on women’s rights, public policies, and social movements. Her work has been published in English, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese.

J. Paul Martin
Senior Scholar

Professor Martin, together with Professor Louis Henkin (University Professor Emeritus/Special Service Professor, Columbia University), founded CSHR in 1978, and served as its executive director through June 2007. Before coming to Columbia to complete his PhD at Teachers College (with a dissertation on education in Africa during the 19th century), he spent several years as a missionary and university teacher in Africa. Over the years, Professor Martin’s primary research interest has been human rights education, especially in Africa, as well as religion and human rights. Currently, his work is focused on the impact of multinational corporations on developing countries from a human rights perspective.

Stephanie V. Grepo
Director of Capacity Building Programs

Stephanie V. Grepo joined CSHR in August 2008. She leads the Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP), an annual training program for human rights activists from around the world. Ms. Grepo has increased funding for the Program, thereby allowing more Advocates to participate in an enhanced HRAP. She is currently a part-time lecturer at The New School. From 2000 to 2007, Ms. Grepo was seconded by the U.S. Department of State to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest regional security organization. She organized elections and developed multi-ethnic experiential education programs in Kosovo, managed confidence-building projects in the former crisis region of Macedonia, worked on return and integration issues and led a field office of 10 staff in central Croatia, and served as the youth and education advisor in Serbia. She earned a master’s degree in human rights from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Previously, she worked as an editor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Irene Atamian
Business Manager

Ms. Atamian joined CSHR as its business manager in September 2006. Ms. Atamian exercises primary responsibility for CSHR’s administrative and programmatic budgets, as well as its personnel and instructional expenses, and for all grants and gift accounts. She received a Master of City and Regional Planning from Cornell University in August 2005. Prior to attending Cornell, she worked as an analyst at Nielsen Media Research. Ms. Atamian holds a Bachelor of Science in economics and finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Kristina Eberbach
Program Coordinator

Ms. Eberbach joined CSHR as interim director of capacity-building programs in August 2008 and is now program coordinator. She received her Masters of International Affairs in 2008 from SIPA, where she concentrated in human rights. She earned her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her interest in human rights in conflict and transitional contexts led her to pursue research and programmatic work in Kenya, The Netherlands, Uganda, and South Africa.

Joe Kirchhof
Assistant Program Officer

Mr. Kirchhof joined CSHR in February, 2007. He manages CSHR's student and public outreach and information systems. Mr. Kirchhof also supports many functions of the Human Rights Advocates Program and other CSHR capacity building initiatives. He holds a Bachelors in Cultural Studies and Political Science from the University of Minnesota and previously worked at Amnesty International in Chicago.