Legacy of the Genocide Convention: Impact on Human Rights and International Criminal Law

John M. Geiringer Related Seminars and Products

Partner, Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg LLP; Co-Director, Center for National Security and Human Rights Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law

Barack Ferrazzano LLP, Chicago

John is a nationally recognized banking attorney who advises financial institutions on regulatory, governance, and investigative matters. He regularly provides focused training sessions to boards and management on a wide range of legal and risk management topics. Working at the forefront of banking law and regulation, John is a thought leader in the field, primarily through teaching, writing, and frequent media interviews.

As the Regulatory Section Leader of BFKN’s Financial Institutions Group, John advises a wide variety of financial institutions around the country about the full spectrum of legal, regulatory, and supervisory issues that they face. He is a frequent speaker and author in the financial institutions area on issues surrounding banking regulations, examinations, and enforcement actions, as well as on cybersecurity.

John devotes significant time to anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, and related national security issues. In this regard, he lectures and advises institutions around the country, engages with relevant organizations, and has published on the subject.

Prior to joining BFKN in 1999, John worked as a bank regulator and also as a compliance consultant. He served as legal counsel for the Illinois bank regulatory agency, now the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. John also obtained practical experience with respect to bank operations and compliance issues as a regulatory consultant with a regional accounting firm, performing compliance reviews and training for a variety of financial institutions.

Adam Weber Related Seminars and Products

Associate Dean of International Programs, Assistant Professor of Law

Chicago-Kent College of Law

Adam Weber, an experienced leader and former international war crimes prosecutor, joined the Chicago-Kent College of Law faculty as an associate dean on July 1, 2022.  In his current position, Weber supervises Chicago-Kent’s international programs, including the school’s LL.M. degree programs, visiting scholars program, and overseas training programs.  He also serves as an assistant professor of law and teaches Public International Law, International Criminal Law & Human Rights, Trial Advocacy, Advanced Trial Advocacy, Litigation Technology, and Legal Writing.

Weber is best known for his prominent role as a Trial Attorney at the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a special court established to try those responsible for serious violations of humanitarian law committed in the Balkans. At the ICTY he prosecuted cases involving senior political, police, and military officials, and brought justice for the victims of mass atrocity crimes. In his final case, Weber helped secure the conviction of General Ratko Mladić, the highest-ranking officer prosecuted at the tribunal. 

Before joining the ICTY, Weber worked as an assistant state’s attorney in Chicago, where he prosecuted defendants for crimes such as murder, sexual violence, and drug trafficking.  He began his career as a business and commercial litigation associate at the law firm of Gould & Ratner in Chicago.

Since leaving the ICTY, Weber has served as a legal expert for international organizations engaged in protecting human rights, upholding the rule of law, and fighting terrorism. He has provided his expertise to train lawyers from across the world and help strengthen international and domestic judiciaries and prosecutorial offices in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. 

Weber graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1999 and was a member of the law school’s Trial Advocacy Team. From 2004 to 2006 he taught trial advocacy at Chicago-Kent as an adjunct professor. He returned to the school in 2019 as Chicago-Kent’s Director of the LL.M. Trial Advocacy Program.  Weber earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Iowa. 

Ambassador David Scheffer Related Seminars and Products

Senior Fellow at Council on Foreign Relations, Director Emeritus for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Former United States Ambassador at Large for War Crimes (1997-2001)

Ambassador David J. Scheffer is senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), with a focus on international law and international criminal justice. Scheffer was the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law (2006-2020) and is Director Emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is Professor of Practice at Arizona State University (Washington offices). During the second term of the Clinton Administration (1997-2001), Scheffer was the first ever U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues and led the U.S. delegation to the UN talks establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). He signed the Rome Statute of the ICC on behalf of the United States on December 31, 2000. He negotiated the creation of five war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the ICC. He chaired the Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group (1998-2001). Among his more recent publications are the award-winning All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, 2012), and The Sit Room: In the Theater of War and Peace (Oxford, 2019). 

Hollie Nyseth-Nzitatira Related Seminars and Products

Associate Professor of Sociology

Ohio State

Dr. Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio State. She has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters about genocide, transitional justice, and human rights. She is currently finalizing a book (with Oxford University Press) on the reintegration of Rwandans who were incarcerated for committing genocide. Dr. Nyseth Nzitatira is the 2023 recipient of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Engaged Scholar Award and creates educational context for high-school educators teaching about genocide. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Atrocity Crimes and the Editor in Chief of the International Association of Genocide Scholars Policy Brief Initiative. Dr. Nyseth Nzitatira also conducts atrocity forecasting for the U.S. government and runs an education abroad program in Rwanda. 

Dr. Scott Straus Related Seminars and Products

Professor of Political Science

Professor of Political Science, American Academy of Political and Social Science

Dr. Scott Straus is Professor of Political Science and the 2023 Mahatma M.K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He studies political violence, genocide, human rights, and post-conflict politics with an empirical focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Making and Unmaking Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa (Cornell, 2015), which won the Grawemeyer Award for Improving World Order, the Lepgold Prize from Georgetown University, the Best Book in Conflict Processes from the American Political Science Association, and the Best Book in Human Rights from the International Studies Association. Straus also wrote The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War (Cornell, 2006), which won the Best Book in Political Science from the Association of American Publishers and Honorable Mention for the Melville Herskovits prize from the African Studies Association. He is a coeditor of Vol III of the Cambridge World History of Genocide (Cambridge, 2023), the author of Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016), and co-author, with Barry Driscoll, Introduction to International Studies: Global Forces, Interactions, and Tensions (Sage, 2022, 2nd ed.). In 2016, President Obama appointed him to the Council of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Straus continues to serve on the Museum’s Committee on Conscience. Prior to his academic career, Straus was a freelance journalist based in Nairobi; he was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his 1996 coverage of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.