Columbia University in the City of New York
CSHR Staff
- Elazar Barkan, Co-Director ()
- Alice Miller, Co-Director ()
- Yasmine Ergas, Associate Director ()
- J. Paul Martin, Senior Scholar ()
- Silvia Fernández, Director of Capacity Building Programs ()
- Irene Atamian, Business Manager ()
- Joe Kirchhof, Assistant Program Officer ()
Professor Barkan is a Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. With Professor Miller, he is the Co-Director of the Human Rights Concentration at SIPA. Professor Barkan served on CSHR's board of directors before becoming a Co-Director in July 2007. He is also the founding Director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation at the Salzburg Seminar, which promotes reconciliation in societies divided by historical conflicts and human rights abuses. Before coming to Columbia, Professor Barkan served as Chair of the History and of the Cultural Studies Departments at the Claremont Graduate University, where he was the founding Director of the Humanities Center. Professor Barkan's research interests focus on the role of history in contemporary society and politics, with particular emphasis on the response to gross historical crimes and injustices, and human rights. 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).
Professor Miller, JD, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Public Health and International Affairs as well as a Staff Attorney at the Law and Policy Project at the Heilbrunn Department for Population and Family Health at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Professor Miller has long been involved with CSHR both as a board member and in less formal capacities. She joined CSHR as a Co-Director in July, 2007. Professor Miller is an internationally known human rights lawyer with expertise in gender, sexuality and international humanitarian and human rights issues. She has worked with and continues to cooperate with key national and international NGOs such as Amnesty International, the Human Rights Law Group (now Global Rights) and Human Rights Watch on human rights issues in the US and globally, including anti-death penalty, women's rights, health and LGBT issues. Her current work focuses on two areas: developing human rights theory and practice in the context of sexuality, and elaborating the theory and practice of the intersection of human rights and health policy and programming, especially in humanitarian contexts. With Professor Barkan, she has co-led the School of International and Public Affairs' Human Rights Concentration since August 2006. Prof. Miller is on leave for 2008.
Yasmine Ergas
Associate Director
Ms. Ergas, a lawyer and sociologist who also serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor of International Law at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, is a graduate of the Universities of Sussex, Rome and Columbia Law School. Her experience spans research, teaching and legal practice, program-building and administration, and human rights activism. Ms. Ergas 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 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 has served as the coordinator of, and an advisor to, the gender program of the Millennium Village Project. Ms. Ergas has been involved in Human Rights Watch for many years and is a member of the Board of New York City Global Partners. Ms. Ergas has written extensively, focusing particularly on women’s rights and social movements. Her work has been published in English, Italian, French, German, Japanese and Portuguese.
Dr. 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 Ph.D. at Teachers College (with a dissertation on education in Africa during the 19th century), Dr. Martin spent several years as a missionary and university teacher in Africa. Over the years, Dr. 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.
Silvia Fernández
Director of Capacity Building Programs
Ms. Fernández's leads all of CSHR's capacity building activities, including the Human Rights Advocates Program, an annual four-month training program for human rights activists from around the world. She is also responsible for overseeing the administration of the Third Millennium Foundation Fellowships and other capacity building projects as well as developing new capacity building programs. Originally from Spain, she completed her M.A. in International Education in December 2006 at New York University with a specialization in Human Rights Education. She holds a B.Sc. in Politics and International Relations from the University of Southampton, England. Prior to joining CSHR, Ms. Fernández worked in diverse non-governmental organizations devoted to human rights education, advocacy, immigration, and environmental concerns in Europe and the U.S.
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 Masters in 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 Bachelors from N.Y.U.'s Stern School of Business.
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.
