David Cohen, Professor for the Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley

David Cohen is the Ancker Distinguished Professor for the Humanities and the Director of the War Crimes Studies Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a Senior Fellow in International Law at the East-West Center, where he directs the Asian International Justice Initiative, and a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Cohen has conducted research on war crimes trials from WWII to the present day. He founded the War Crimes Studies Center in 2000 in order to create an archive of WWII war crimes trials and to study the development and jurisprudence of international criminal law and international humanitarian law since the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. In regard to contemporary tribunals, he has been particularly engaged in East Timor, Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. Apart from conducting his own research on war crimes trials in these countries, he has developed programs at the War Crimes Studies Center that monitor trials and provide assistance to these courts. These programs have provided training for judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and the Human Rights Courts of Indonesia. The War Crimes Studies Center also monitors and reports on trials at these courts and engages in other activities such as community outreach programs or providing technical assistance. From 2006-2008 Cohen served as the Expert Advisor to the first bilateral truth commission, the Commission on Truth and Friendship, established by the Presidents of Indonesia and East Timor. His recent publications in this area include: Indifference and Accountability: The United Nations and the Politics of International Justice in East Timor; and Intended to Fail: Trials Before the Indonesian Ad Hoc Human Rights Court in Jakarta.

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