Short biographies of the Panelists

Panelists

Adrio Bacchetta

Adrio Bacchetta was born and educated in the United Kingdom. After studying engineering in Queen Mary College London and gaining a Masters Degree in Engineering Geology from Newcastle University in 1987, he worked for ten years in the field of Civil Engineering Project Management. He started working in the field of Humanitarian Action with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in 1997 with a mission in Afghanistan and since then has held field posts in project, logistics and country management. Between 2000 and 2002 he was an Operational Adviser based in Amsterdam, supporting and managing MSF programs in Central Africa (DRC, Burundi), Southern Africa (Zambia, Angola), Kosovo, South Asia (India, Sri Lanka) and East Asia (China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma). He returned to the field as head of Mission for MSF in Mexico at the end of 2002 for two years. Since February 2005, he has been General Director of MSF in Germany, based in Berlin.

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Prof. Dr. Omer Bartov

Prof. Dr. Omer Bartov, is Professor for European History at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He has received stipends from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Harvard and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others, and was Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows in Harvard, Visiting Fellow at the Davis Center in Princeton and Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. Since 2005 he has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the moment he is Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.

Publications (selection):
Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (1991)
Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (1996)
Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity (2000)
Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories (2003)
The "Jew" in Cinema: From The Golem to Don't Touch My Holocaust (2005)
ERASED: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (to be published in September 2007)

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Gerhart R. Baum

Gerhart R. Baum, born in Dresden in 1932, is a lawyer and former Minister of the Interior. He has lived in Cologne since 1950. Politics: Member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) since 1954; 1972 to 1994 Member of Parliament, since 1982 in various positions: Speaker for Environment and Culture as well as Human Rights; 1972 to 1978 Parliamentary Secretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior, 1978 to 1982 Minister of the Interior. Human Rights: 1992 to 1998 Head of the German Delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission, Geneva; 1993 Head of the German Delegation to the Human Rights World Conference in Vienna; 2001 to 2003 UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan; since 2003 Member of the Board of the Stiftung Menschenrechte - Förderstiftung amnesty international, Förderkreis Komittee Cap Anamur; since 2006 Member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch.

Publications (selection):
Das Auf und Ab der Liberalen von 1848 bis heute (1983)
Der Staat auf dem Weg zum Bürger (1980)
Die Menschenrechtspolitik in den Vereinten Nationen (Hrsg., 1998)

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Prof. Dr. W. Michael Blumenthal

Prof. Dr. W. Michael Blumenthal, born in Oranienburg in 1926, has been Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin since 1997, following a varied career as professor of economics, politician, manager and author. He has received many honors and awards, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin, the Leo Baeck-Medal and the Goethe-Medal. In 2000 he was named Honorary Citizen of Oranienburg. He is a member of the Board of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Council of Foreign Relations, among others.

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Carroll Bogert

Carroll Bogert, Associate Director of Human Rights Watch, was born in Chicago in 1961. She frequently publishes on op-ed pages, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, USA Today, the Boston Globe, and the New Republic. Before joining Human Rights Watch in 1998, Ms. Bogert spent more than a decade in international news reporting - for the Washington Post in Beijing and the Newsweek bureaus in Beijing, Hong Kong (Southeast Asia), Moscow and New York. In her last job at Newsweek, as International Correspondent, Ms. Bogert wrote on a wide array of foreign topics, traveling to Iran, Cuba, China, Hong Kong, the former Soviet states, and Western Europe. She also covered the United Nations. She speaks Russian and Mandarin Chinese. Ms. Bogert holds an M.A. in East Asian Studies and a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University. She has two daughters and lives in New York City. In 1991 Ms. Bogert published, with photographer Liu Heung-shing, the book "USSR: The Collapse of an Empire."

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Khédidja Bourcart

Khédidja Bourcart was born in Bougtonne, a village in the small Kabylie region of Algeria, in 1953. After spending her childhood in Nanterre, in the outskirts of Paris, and after a brief stay in Algeria she resumed her militant activities in France in areas associated with the culture and history of immigration. After her activist work in the Parisian district where she lives and her collaboration with the Greens, she was elected Councilor of Paris in 1997 and Vice Mayor in 2001, appointed by the Mayor of Paris to work towards the integration of non-European citizens.

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Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik

Prof. Dr. Micha Brumlik, born in Davos, Switzerland, in 1947, lives in Frankfurt/ Main. Following his studies in Pedagogy and Philosophy, he was Research Assistant of Pedagogy in Göttingen and Mainz, and Assistant Professor in Hamburg. From 1981 to 2000 he taught Educational Science at the University of Heidelberg. Since 2000 he has been Professor at the Institute for Educational Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main with the focus "Theory of Education." From 2000 to 2005 he also served as Director of the Fritz Bauer Institute, Study and Documentation Center for the History and Impact of the Holocaust in Frankfurt/Main.

Publications (selection):
Deutscher Geist und Judenhaß. Das Verhältnis des philosophischen Idealismus zum Judentum (2000)
Bildung und Glück. Versuch einer Theorie der Tugenden (2002)
Aus Katastrophen lernen. Grundlagen zeitgeschichtlicher Bildung in menschenrechtlicher Absicht (2004)
Sigmund Freud. Der Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts (2006)
Vom Missbrauch der Disziplin. Antworten der Wissenschaft auf Bernhard Bueb (2007)

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Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin

Prof. Dr. Herta Däubler-Gmelin, born in Preßburg in 1943, is a lawyer and former Minister of Justice. Honorary Professor at the Free University Berlin and the Tongji University Shanghai. Patron of the German Hospice-Movement (BAG); Member of the Board of various humanitarian foundations. Member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) since 1965, Member of the Board of the SPD since 1978, 1988 to 1997 Vice-Chair of the Board of the SPD. Member of Parliament since 1972; various positions (Chair of the Legal Affairs Committee, Chair of the Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture Committee), 1983 to 1993 Vice-Chair of the SPD parliamentary group, 1994 to 1998 legal advisor of the SPD parliamentary group, since November 2005 Chair of the Committee for Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. 1998 to 2002 Minister of Justice.

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Marianne Heuwagen

Marianne Heuwagen, born in Königswinter (near Bonn) in 1950, has been Director of the Berlin office of Human Rights Watch since 2005. 1969 to 1975 studies of Literature and History at the Universities of Bonn and Munich, state exam 1975; 1975 to 1977 study of Communications at Stanford University, M.A. 1977; 1977 to 1986 free lance Correspondent on the west coast of the U.S. for various public broadcasting stations in Germany (WDR, SDR, SFB, NDR), the weekly DIE ZEIT and the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung in San Francisco and Los Angeles; 1986 return to Germany as Berlin Correspondent for Süddeutsche Zeitung; 1988 co-founder of the Friends of Villa Aurora, an initiative to maintain the home of exiled German writer Lion Feuchtwanger in Pacific Palisades as a Center for European American Relations and Artists' Colony (1994 to 1997, Chair of the Friends of Villa Aurora, since 1998 Chair of the Board of Trustees); 1999 Reporter in the National Bureau of Süddeutsche Zeitung, in Berlin; 2003 Editor of the op-ed-column "Außenansicht" for Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich.

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Leslie Lefkow

Leslie Lefkow has worked as a researcher in Human Rights Watch's Africa division since January 2003. A graduate of Columbia Law School, she has investigated and documented human rights abuses and violations of humanitarian law in numerous countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sudan. Ms. Lefkow first worked in Sudan in 1997 and has followed human rights developments in the country for the past decade. She lived in Khartoum for two years and has visited most regions of the country. Ms. Lefkow documented human rights abuses in the displaced persons camps in Khartoum as well as in the oil fields of Upper Nile. In February 2004 Ms. Lefkow went to Chad to interview refugees from Darfur and wrote Human Rights Watch's first report on Darfur, "Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan," the first of many reports and documents she has written on Darfur for Human Rights Watch.

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Lotte Leicht

Lotte Leicht, Lawyer, Human Rights Watch EU Director since 1994, is responsible for strategic advocacy vis-à-vis European governments, the European Union and other international and regional inter-governmental organizations. She has conducted numerous investigations into, and written reports about, human rights and humanitarian law violations in conflict areas around the world. She graduated from Copenhagen University and teaches international humanitarian law. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, of the International Humanitarian Law Committee of the Danish Red Cross in Copenhagen, the Advisory Council of the Kofi Annan Fellowship in Global Governance and the Advisory Board of the North-South Committee of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. She is also board member of the Plum Foundation in Copenhagen. From 1990 to 1994 she was Program Director of the International Helsinki Federation, Vienna, Austria; and from 1987 to 1989 staff member of the Danish Centre for Human Rights, Copenhagen, Denmark.

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Dr. Petra Lidschreiber

Dr. Petra Lidschreiber was born and grew up in Munich. In November 1998 she joined the Berlin broadcasting corporation SFB as Chief Editor for Television. She received her journalistic education at the German Journalism School in Munich and studied Business, Political Science and Economics in Berlin, London and Durham (USA), where she received her M.A. in Economics. Following a research year at the London School of Economics, she received her Ph.D. at the Free University in Berlin. She was business reporter at WDR Television from 1979 to 1992. From 1992 to 1998 she was Head of the New York Studio of the ARD. 1998 she returned to the ARD Studio in Bonn. Following the fusion of ORB and SFB, she continued her work as Chief Editor for Television at the newly created RBB, Broadcast Berlin-Brandenburg. Since 2006 she has been the Head of the Department for Central and Eastern Europe at RBB.

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Kerstin Müller

Kerstin Müller, born in Siegen in 1963, is a jurist and former Minister of State. Since 1986 member of the Alliance 90/The Greens party, 1990 to 1994 Chair of the State Board of Alliance 90/The Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia. Member of Parliament since 1994; 1994 to 1998 and 1998 to 2002 Chair of the parliamentary group Alliance 90/The Greens; October 2002 to November 2005 Minister of State in the Federal Foreign Office; since 2005 Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Foreign Affairs Speaker of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group. Member of the international Friends Committee of the former concentration camp Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück e.V., of the German-Israeli Parliamentarian Group, the German-Israeli Society, Member of the Board of the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung, of the Zentrum für internationale Friedenseinsätze, the Max-Planck-Institute for foreign and international criminal law, the Deutsche Welle and Internationale Journalistenprogramme e.V.

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Prof. Dr. Michael Naumann

Prof. Dr. Michael Naumann, former Minister of State, born 1941 in Köthen, Germany. Ph.D. in Political Science 1969 in Munich. Further studies of Political Science, History and Philosophy at The Queen's College, Oxford; Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin. Editor and Foreign Correspondent for DIE ZEIT between 1970 and 1983. Senior Foreign Editor for Der Spiegel until 1985. Publisher and CEO of Rowohlt Verlag, Germany until 1995. CEO Metropolitan Books and Henry Holt Inc., New York until 1998. Minister of State for Culture and Media in the cabinet of Gerd Schröder until 2000. Publisher and Chief Editor of DIE ZEIT, Hamburg, Germany until August 2004, Publisher of DIE ZEIT until 2007.

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Salih Mahmoud Osman

Salih Mahmoud Osman, born 1957, is a Darfur lawyer and has been representing victims of ethnic cleansings in Sudan and opponents to the Sudanese regime as a human rights activist free of charge for 20 years. Mostly these are persons who have been imprisoned arbitrarily and been tortured. In 2004, Salih Mahmoud Osman was arrested because of his work and dedication. He was held in detention without charge for seven months. Since the beginning of the conflicts in Darfur in 2003, he works closely with the Sudan Organization Against Torture (SOAT). In collaboration with Human Rights Watch, he also investigated human rights abuses in Sudan, for which he was awarded the Human Rights Defender Award in 2005. Since 2006 he is Member of Parliament of the opposition and as such is fighting for a reformation of the legal system. In addition he still is working as a legal advisor in Nyala and Khartoum.

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John Prendergast

John Prendergast is Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group. He worked in the White House and the State Department in the Clinton administration from 1996-2001 and has worked for a variety of NGOs and think tanks in Africa and the U.S. His areas of expertise include African Affairs, Conflict prevention and resolution, and Sub-Saharan Africa, especially DR Congo, Sudan and Uganda. He has authored or coauthored seven books on Africa and is currently co-authoring a book with actor Don Cheadle. He has published op-ed pieces and interviews in Time, Newsweek, the Economist, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal, among many others.

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Dr. Hans-Joachim Preuß

Dr. Hans-Joachim Preuß, born in Neuwied am Rhein in 1955, has been General Secretary of German Agro Action (Deutsche Welthungerhilfe) since 2003. He studied Agricultural Sciences in Gießen (1980 to 1985), and did post-graduate studies at the German Institute for Development (Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik) in Berlin (1985/86). Project Assistant at the Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) in Mauritania 1986/87, GTZ Project Economist/Team Leader in Benin until 1990. Docent for Regional Planning and Project Planning at the University of Gießen/Zentrum für Regionalentwicklung, combined with a Ph.D. in Agriculture in 1994. Senior Management Advisor in the policy department for corporate development of the GTZ. 1996 to 2003 Head of the project department at German Agro Action. Experience in ca. 40 foreign countries, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Mauritania and Benin.

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Thilo Thielke

Thilo Thielke, born 1968, has been Africa Correspondent for Der Spiegel in Nairobi, Kenia, since 2003. From 1985 to 1990 free lance Journalist for the Neue Presse in Hanover, from 1990 to 1996 Reporter at Spiegel TV, since 1997 Reporter at Der Spiegel. Since 1988 reporting on crises, wars and genocides - among others in Nicaragua (1988), Romania (1990), Kurdistan (1991), Somalia (1992), Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo (1992-1999), Moscow (1993), Chiapas (1994), Congo (1995). Since 2002 in Africa, among others Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sudan, Chad, Somalia. Award: New York TV and Film Festival, Silver for the report "The Bosnian Mass Graves" (1996).

Non-Fiction:
An Gott kommt keiner vorbei - Das Leben des Reinhard Stan Libuda (1997)
Eine Liebe in Auschwitz (2000, translated into French, Chinese, Dutch)
Krieg im Lande des Mahdi - Darfur und der Zerfall des Sudan (2006)

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Darfur Week

All events

March 15, 2007
Opening

March 16, 200
Conference

March 17, 2007
Reports from Darfur

March 18, 2007
Symposium

March 19, 2007
Student Programs

March 20, 2007
Concert

21.3.2007
Film