Beth Van Schaack

Dr. Beth Van Schaack (@BethVanSchaack) is a Distinguished Fellow with Stanford’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice and previously served as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department office where she once served as Deputy. She was Executive Editor of Just Security from 2014 until returning to public service in March 2022.

As Ambassador, Dr. Van Schaack advised the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide and the deployment of the whole range of transitional justice mechanisms in states emerging from violence or repression. Prior to returning to public service, Dr. Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Ambassador Van Schaack has published numerous articles and papers on international human rights and justice issues, including her 2020 thesis, Imagining Justice for Syria (Oxford University Press).

Dr. Van Schaack is a Commissioner with the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a Senior Peace Fellow with the Public International Law & Policy Group, a Distinguished Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, and a Distinguished Fellow with the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace & Security. With seven other senior U.S. government human rights mandate holders, she is a co-founder of The Alliance for Diplomacy & Justice, which works to center human rights within U.S. foreign policy.

Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Dr. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.