BU Law News

Zachary D. Kaufman Joins BU Law as Kleh Visiting Professor

The expert in criminal law, international law, national security law, and international and transitional justice will deliver the annual Kleh Lecture on April 13.

Professor Kaufman is on leave from the University of Houston Law Center, where he is associate professor of law and political science and codirector of the Criminal Justice Institute. He has also taught at Stanford Law School, Yale University Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. In addition, he was a senior fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and held other academic appointments at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and New York University.

The author or editor of three books and more than 40 articles and book chapters, Professor Kaufman is currently working on his fourth book (under contract with Cambridge University Press), this one on the law and politics of bystanders and upstanders. He has also written for popular outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Forbes, among others, and both of the leading international law blogs (Just Security and Opinio Juris).

Professor Kaufman has served in all three branches of the US government. In the judicial branch, he was a US Supreme Court fellow and clerk to a distinguished BU Law alum, Hon. Juan R. Torruella (’57), on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In the legislative branch, he was a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during which he was a lead architect of both the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act (enacted in January 2019) and the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act (enacted in August 2018 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act). In the executive branch, he served at the US Departments of Justice and State. He also has served at three international war crimes tribunals: the International Criminal Court (where he was the first American to serve) as well as the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the Former Yugoslavia. In the private sector, Professor Kaufman has practiced law at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and worked at Google.

A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Kaufman is involved in various academic organizations and think tanks. He currently serves as a member of the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee (which provides advice to the law school and its dean), chair of the Association of American Law Schools’ International Human Rights Section, cochair of the American Society of International Law’s Human Rights Interest Group, executive committee member of both the Association of American Law Schools’ Criminal Law Section and National Security Law Section, coorganizer of the Law and Society Association’s Collaborative Research Network (CRN) on Transitional Justice, fellow of the Truman National Security Project, member of Genocide Watch’s board of advisors, and member of the American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, International Association of Genocide Scholars, and International Network of Genocide Scholars.

Professor Kaufman received his JD from Yale Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow, editor-in-chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review, managing editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, articles editor of the Yale Journal of International Law, and cofounder and copresident of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs. He earned his DPhil and MPhil, both in international relations, from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He earned his BA in political science from Yale University, where he was the student body president, cocaptain of the Yale Wrestling Team, and an All-American and Runner-up National Champion in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association.