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International Advisory Board Members

Diego Arria, former Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, Venezuela

Diego Arria is a distinguished diplomat and businessman who served as the Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations and as President of the Security Council. Recently he was Special Adviser to the Secretary General of the United Nations and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. He previously served as Governor of Caracas, Congressman and Minister of Information and Tourism of Venezuela, Visiting Diplomatic Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and Board member of the International Peace Academy in New York. Arria serves on the advisory boards of Unilever, the Latin American Advisor of the Inter-American Dialogue, the Institute of the Americas at the University of California in San Diego, School of International Service (SIS) at American University, Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University, and the International Crisis Group. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Museum of Arts and Design of New York and the United Nations Association of the United States (UN-USA). Arria is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Athelera LLC in New York, a strategic financial advisory firm focused on mergers and acquisitions.

Jules Bernstein '57, labor lawyer, Washington D.C.

Jules Bernstein is a Washington, D.C.-based labor lawyer who has advocated for workers’ rights for more than a half-century. He has represented several of the country’s largest labor unions. In 1970, he served as union counsel when 250,000 U.S Postal Service workers went on strike. As a result, they obtained substantial wage increases, the right to collective bargaining and the first of many subsequent negotiated labor contracts. In the 1980s, he sued the Postal Service after discovering that postal employees were not being properly compensated on the job and were not being paid for work performed at home. Following years of litigation, 500,000 postal workers won retroactive wages and damages. While counsel to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, he helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. He and his wife, Linda Lipsett, operate a “mom and pop” labor law firm, where they specialize in Fair Labor Standards Act litigation. He serves on the board of directors of the National Labor College, Interfaith Worker Justice and the National Employment Law Project. At Brandeis, he established the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, which supports Brandeis students, enhances campus life, and promotes the issues of social justice that the former U.S. Supreme Court justice championed throughout his life.  In 2012 the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice provided important funding for the first 'DEIS Impact, a weeklong "festival of social justice" at Brandeis, and continues to support that successful program in its second year. He received the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award in 2007. Bernstein earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School and his LL.M. in labor law from the New York University Law School.

Thomas Buergenthal, Judge of the International Court of Justice, Washington D.C.

A United States citizen, Thomas Buergenthal was a judge on the 15-member International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague from 2000 until his resignation in September 2010. He is a former President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee and of the U. N. Truth Commission for El Salvador. Recipient of the Gruber Foundation International Justice Prize and member of the Ethics Commission of the International Olympic Committee, he has been re-appointed Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at the George Washington University Law School, where he taught before his election to the ICJ. He has also been re-named to the Committee on Conscience of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. Judge Buergenthal is author or co-author of numerous books and law review articles on international law and international human rights topics. His memoir A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy was published in 2009.

Hans Corell, former Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Sweden

Hans Corell served as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations from March 1994 to March 2004. In this capacity, he was head of the Office of Legal Affairs in the United Nations Secretariat. Before joining the United Nations, he was Ambassador and Under-Secretary for Legal and Consular Affairs in his native Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1994. From 1962 to 1972, he served first as a law clerk and later as a judge in circuit courts and appeal courts. In 1972, he joined the Ministry of Justice, where he became a Director in 1979 and the Chief Legal Officer in 1981. Corell has been a member of Sweden's delegation to the UN General Assembly 1985-1993 and has had several assignments related to the Council of Europe, OECD, and the CSCE (now OSCE). He was co-author of the CSCE proposal for the establishment of the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was transmitted to the UN in February 1993. In 1998, he was the Secretary-General's representative at the Rome Conference on the International Criminal Court. Since his retirement from public service in 2004, Corell has been engaged in many different activities in the legal field, inter alia as legal adviser, lecturer, and member of different boards. Among other activities, he is involved in the work of the International Bar Association and the Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law. In January 2006, he gave the keynote address at the fourth Brandeis Institute for International Judges, held in Dakar, Senegal. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the University of Lund from 2006-2012. He is the author of many publications. His website is at http://www.havc.se. (Click here to read an interview with Hans Corell conducted on March 9, 2006.) Member of a Commission of Jurists appointed in 2012 to inquire into the cause of the death of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was killed in an aircraft crash in 1961.

Kishore Mahbubani, ambassador and scholar, Singapore

Kishore Mahbubani was appointed the first Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore in 2004. He is  currently Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public. He was formerly a civil servant and career diplomat who was with the Singapore Foreign Service from 1971-2004. His overseas postings included Cambodia (during the war, in 1973-74), Kuala Lumpur, the United States, and the United Nations. Most recently, he was the Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations and High Commissioner of Singapore to Canada. Mahbubani served as President of the Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002 and was the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Ministry from 1993-1998 and he also served twice as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN. He was the first Dean of the Civil Service College in Singapore and has served on the Boards and Councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the Yale President's Council on International Activities, the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, the Indian Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Council, the University of Bocconi International Advisory Committee and the World Economic Forum - Global Agenda Council on China.

Prof. Mahbubani has published and spoken in all corners of the globe. His articles have appeared in a wide range of journals and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, Time, Newsweek, the Financial Times and New York Times. He is the author of “Can Asians Think?” as well as “Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World,” and “The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.” His latest book, “The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World,” was published in 2013. The Foreign Policy Association Medal was awarded to him in New York in June 2004 with the following opening words in the citation: “A gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker.” He was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in 2005 and was included in the 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals (including Pres. Obama, Premier Wen Jiabao and Pres. Sarkozy) who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism. Most recently, Prof Mahbubani was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, he was described as “the muse of the Asian century.”

Jamie Metzl, Partner, Cranemere LLC and Senior Fellow at the Asia Society, New York, NY

Jamie F. Metzl is a partner in the global investment holding company Cranemere LLC and a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society. He was formally the Asia Society's Executive Vice President and responsible for overseeing the institution's strategic directions and overall program activities globally. Dr. Metzl has extensive government experience including service in the White House, the Department of State and U.S. Senate. In 2004 he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri's Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City. Dr. Metzl's government appointments have included Deputy Staff Director and Senior Counselor of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senior Coordinator for International Public Information at the Department of State, and Director for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs on the White House National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. At the White House, he coordinated U.S. government international public information campaigns for Iraq, Kosovo, and other crises. A Khmer speaker, he was a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) from 1991 to 1993, where he helped establish a nation-wide human rights investigation and monitoring unit for Cambodia. The author of a non-fiction book on human rights in Southeast Asia and the novel The Depths of the Sea (St. Martin's Press), his writing on Asian affairs, virtual reality, human genetic engineering and other topics has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs and many other publications and he is a regular commentator in national and international media including the BBC, CNN, and Fox News. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founder and Board Co-Chair of the bipartisan national security organization Partnership for a Secure America, and a former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow. He serves on numerous charitable boards and holds a Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Oxford University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. Dr. Metzl has completed seven ironman triathlons and 25 marathons.

Sari Nusseibeh, President, Al-Quds University, Palestine

Sari Nusseibeh is a scholar and humanitarian whose voice has resonated throughout the Middle East with the hope for a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In his various roles as president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, and as an activist, he has worked zealously on behalf of the people of his region. A philosophy professor, Nusseibeh earned his B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University in 1971 and his Ph.D. in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard University in 1978. In October 2001, Nusseibeh was briefly appointed Palestinian political representative in Jerusalem. In 2004-5, he was a Rita Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. He was invited to deliver the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Harvard in 2008, and the Multatuli Lecture at Leuven University  in 2009, where he was also awarded an honorary doctoral degree. His other awards include the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Medal, 2004. He is a prolific writer whose work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers in the United States, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. His English-language books, including No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (1991), have been translated into several languages, as has his more recent work Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life (2007), co-authored with Anthony David. His newest book, What Is a Palestinian State Worth? was published in 2011.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, President of the Center for Strategies and Security for the Sahel Sahara

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah has devoted himself to African development and conflict management throughout his professional career. Between 1969 and 1984, Ould-Abdallah held several posts with the Mauritanian government, including minister of foreign affairs, ambassador to the United States, and ambassador to the European Union. In 1984 he began work within the United Nations as the special coordinator for Africa and the least developed countries, and subsequently (1993-1995) as the special representative of the secretary-general in Burundi. He has authored many publications, including La Diplomatie Pytomane (1996) and Burundi on the Brink (2000), a detailed account of his experiences with the United Nations from 1993 to 1995. Ould-Abdallah was previously the executive secretary for the Global Coalition for Africa, an intergovernmental forum dedicated to addressing and promoting Africa's political and economic reforms. He is currently President of the Center for Strategies and Security for the Sahel Sahara. He previously served as Special Representative of the Secretary General for West Africa and as Special Representative of the Secretary General for Somalia. In January 2006, he gave the keynote address at the Western African Judicial Colloquium in Dakar, Senegal, a gathering coordinated by the Center of twelve West African high court judges and four international judges.

Michael Ratner '66, President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY

Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and is Chairman of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin. Both are non-profit human rights litigation organizations. He and CCR are currently the attorneys in the United States for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. He is still trying to get GUantanamo closed and the indefinite detention scheme it spawned ended. He will keep working until that goal is achieved. He and CCR have also attempted to break the wall of impunity around those officials in the US who ran the torture program. They have filed criminal complaints in the courts of Germany, France and Spain against former US officials including former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. A major area of Ratner's litigation and writing is the enforcement of the prohibition on torture and murder against various dictators and generals who travel to the United States. He has sued on behalf of victims in Guatemala, East Timor, Haiti and Argentina, among other countries. Recently he has been involved in the representation of Wikileaks. Ratner’s books include Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America (2011); Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away with Murder (2011); International Human Rights Litigation in U.S. Courts, Second Edition (2008); Against War with Iraq (2003); Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (2004); and The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book (2008). He has taught human rights litigation at Yale and Columbia Law Schools. A past president of the National Lawyers Guild, Ratner has received many awards, among them Trial Lawyer of the Year, the Columbia Law School Public Interest Law Foundation Award, the Columbia Law School Medal of Honor (2005), the North Star Community Frederick Douglass Award, Honorary Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2005), and The Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Prize for Creative Citizenship (2007). In 2006, the National Law Journal named Ratner as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States.

Gillian Sorensen, Senior Advisor, United Nations Foundation, Washington D.C.

Gillian Sorensen, senior advisor at the United Nations Foundation, is a national advocate on matters related to the United Nations and the United States-United Nations relationship, addressing audiences as diverse as university students, Congressional staff, Rotary, the Air Force Academy and West Point, World Affairs Councils and leaders of civil society. From 1993-2003 she served as Assistant Secretary-General under Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. From 1978-1991, on appointment by Mayor Edward Koch, Sorensen was New York City Commissioner for the United Nations and Consular Corps, head of the city's liaison office with 30,000 diplomats. She is a graduate of Smith College and studied at the Sorbonne. In 2002 she was a teaching Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (Institute of Politics). She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Board of the Roosevelt Institute and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. In addition to her public service, she has been active in politics and was a delegate to three national presidential conventions. Sorensen’s late husband, Theodore C. Sorensen, was the Founding Chair of the Ethics Center’s Board.

Shiranee Tilakawardane, Supreme Court Justice, Sri Lanka

Shiranee Tilakawardane is a Supreme Court justice in Sri Lanka. She was the first woman appointed as a Court of Appeal judge in her country. Previously, she was a high court judge and an admiralty court judge. Tilakawardane's efforts are focused on the fields of equality, gender education, and child rights. She received an award from a national child protection authority for her work for the abused children in Sri Lanka. She has been active in Sakshi of India's gender workshops for judges, the Asia Pacific Forum for Gender Education for Judges, and serves on the International Panel of Judges for the Child Rights Bureau. Tilakawardane served as chairperson of a presidential commission investigating corruption in the purchase of arms and services by the Sri Lankan armed forces. From 2001 to 2003, she was one of 10 Brandeis International Fellows who participated in a series of three one-week institutes over an 18-month period, exploring topics such as human rights, intervention, and international law. (Click here to read an interview with Judge Tilakawardane conducted on March 9, 2006.)

Norbert Weissberg, Chairman, Package Research Laboratory LLC and Stapling Machines Company LLC, New York

Since 1996, Norbert Weissberg has served as chairman and controlling shareholder of Package Research Laboratory, the nation’s largest licensee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture for inspection of wooden pallets and containers intended for export. During that time, he has also held the position of chairman and controlling shareholder at Stapling Machines Company, a manufacturer of machine tools. From 1998 to 2002, he was chairman of the Coca Cola Bottling Company of Israel, and for 12 years prior was president of Ascom Holding Inc., a holding company for seven operating companies owned by Swiss investors. From 1962 to 1965, he was president of Equilease Corporation, a national equipment leasing company that was later purchased by leading aerospace manufacturer Honeywell Corporation. In addition to the Ethics Center International Advisory Board, he is on the boards of Medical Development for Israel, the American Jewish Historical Society, Concert Artists Guild, the “New Group” Theater, and the Brooklyn Historical Society.

Theodore C. Sorensen, Founding Chair (1928-2010), Distinguished Lawyer, Author, John F. Kennedy Advisor and Speechwriter 

Theodore C. Sorensen dedicated himself to serving the global community both as a public official and an international lawyer. For 11 years, he was policy advisor, legal counsel, and speech writer to John F. Kennedy. In those roles he helped to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, advance civil rights legislation, and influence the United States' decision to travel to the moon. He practiced international law for more than 36 years as a Senior Partner, and later Of Counsel, in the prominent U.S. law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, New York. Former chairman of the firm's International Practice Committee, he represented U.S. and multinational corporations in negotiations with governments all over the world, and advised and assisted a large number of foreign governments and government leaders. Sorensen authored the 1965 book Kennedy as well as eight other books on the presidency, politics, or foreign policy. He participated in 10 of the last 14 Democratic Party National Conventions and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Board of the Central Asian-American Enterprise Fund (covering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan) and the Commission on White House Fellows. In 2002, Sorensen was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics in Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. In 2003, he gave the keynote address at the second Brandeis Institute for International Judges, held in Salzburg, Austria. A graduate of the University of Nebraska College of Law, he was a member of the bars of New York, Nebraska, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court. His memoir, Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, was published by HarperCollins in May 2008. In 2009 Sorensen was honored with the the National Humanities Medal, the highest national award in the humanities, as selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Theodore C. Sorensen passed away October 31, 2010. Read the Center's remembrance.

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