Join the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre for a webinar on Diplomatic and International Law Mechanisms in Mass Atrocity and Genocide Prevention.
As the modern world continues to face gross human rights violations, it is important to confront the roots and history of these conflicts and explore how the international community works to them. Guest speakers, Ambassador (ret) Edward O’Donnell and Ambassador David Scheffer will discuss the duality of soft diplomacy and international law mechanisms in the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide, and reflect on the past to invigorate the future.
Ambassador O’Donnell is a Co-Founder of the ASU Lab for Leadership,
Diplomacy and National Security and is a Professor of Practice in the School of
Politics and Global Studies and the Barrett Honors College. He teaches in the
Master of Arts program courses such as: Diplomacy in Action, the Embassy
Country Team, International Negotiations, Diplomacy, Human Rights and
Preventing Genocide, The Holocaust and World War II and International
Economics.
He is on the Board of the Genocide Awareness Week (2025) at ASU.
Ambassador O’Donnell retired from the career U.S. Foreign Service in 2018,
after 33 years in Latin America, German-speaking Europe and other positions
in Washington, D.C. He served in Germany, Austria, Panama, Colombia and
Paraguay, as Charge, Deputy Chief of Mission, Consul General (Principal
Officer), Economic Counselor and Commercial Attaché. In Washington D.C.,
He was a negotiating Ambassador concentrating on Holocaust issues, a
Democratic Charter for the Americas and civil aviation rights. He was
Executive Assistant to three Under Secretaries and Special Assistant, U.S. State
Department Policy Planning Staff.
O’Donnell served in the active U.S. Army Reserve for 30 years with tours in
Germany, Panama and the United States. A Foreign Area Officer in Europe
and Latin America, he commanded two Military Intelligence Detachments as
Colonel.
Since retirement from the State Department, he was Senior Strategy Advisor
to the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security (2014-2018), Senior
Mentor/Advisor to the Afghanistan Government Minister of Counter Narcotics
in Kabul (2011-2014) and State Department inspector (2010 – 2011) in the Middle
East Regional Office of the Inspector General. From 2009 – 2011 he was Acting
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Congressional Relations Bureau
and earlier managed the State Department Liaison Office to the House of
Representatives.
David J. Scheffer joined the School of Politics & Global Studies in 2021 as a Professor. He is also
a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations (Washington office).
From 2006 through 2020 Professor Scheffer was the Mayer Brown/Robert A.
Helman Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and
is Director Emeritus of the Center for International Human Rights there. He was
the Tom A. Bernstein Genocide Prevention Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum (2019-2021) and the International Francqui Professor at
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (2022). From 2012 to 2018 he was the
U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Expert on U.N. Assistance to the Khmer Rouge
Trials. Professor Scheffer was the first U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes
Issues (1997-2001) and led the U.S. delegation to the U.N. talks establishing the
International Criminal Court. He negotiated the creation of five war crimes
tribunals and chaired the Atrocities Prevention Inter-Agency Working Group
(1998-2001). He served on the Deputies Committee of the National Security
Council and as Senior Adviser and Counsel to Dr. Madeleine Albright, the U.S.
Permanent Representative to the United Nations, from 1993-1996. His latest two
books are “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).
Professor Scheffer has worked in an international law firm, the Committee on
Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the U.N. Association of
the U.S.A., and he has held visiting professorships at several law schools. He was
an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1986-87.
Professor Scheffer received the Berlin Prize in 2013, the Champion of Justice
Award of the Center for Justice and Accountability in 2018, and the 2020 Dr.
Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Global Leadership Institute, Tufts
University. Foreign Policy magazine selected him as a “Top Global Thinker of
2011.” He is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and Supreme Court
bars and is a native of Norman, Oklahoma.