CSHR Welcomes Yasmine Ergas as Associate Director

April 18, 2008

The Center for the Study of Human Rights is delighted to announce the appointment of Yasmine Ergas to the position of 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.

The Center is delighted to benefit from Ms. Ergas’ intellectual and organizational leadership skills, breadth of experience, and depth of commitment to human rights. We welcome her on board and look forward to working with her as we build on and expand the Center’s role at Columbia, in New York, and more generally, in the context of international human rights.