International Advisory Board

The distinguished leaders and activists who comprise the Advisory Board are charged with shaping the center’s work. Representing politics, law, scholarship, activism, the arts and other fields, the board members' extraordinary diversity of experience provides the center a unique opportunity to develop ideas that cross usual professional and disciplinary boundaries.

Current Members

John Shattuck portrait
John Shattuck, Chair
Professor of Practice in Diplomacy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University; Senior Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Massachusetts

John Shattuck's career spans more than four decades in higher education, international diplomacy, foreign policy and human rights. He currently holds appointments as professor of practice in diplomacy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and as senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Shattuck previously served as president of Central European University in Austria, chief executive officer at the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, senior fellow at Tufts University and assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor during the Clinton presidential administration. In recognition of his human rights leadership, Shattuck has received the International Human Rights Award from the United Nations Association of Boston; the Ambassador's Award from the American Bar Association Central and East European Law Initiative; and the Tufts University Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

jules bernstein
Jules Bernstein ’57
Labor Lawyer
Washington, DC

Jules Bernstein, a 1957 Brandeis University graduate, is a labor lawyer who has advocated for workers’ rights for more than a half-century. He and wife Linda Lipsett operate the Washington, DC-based law firm Bernstein & Lipsett, where they specialize in Fair Labor Standards Act litigation. Bernstein serves on the board of directors of Interfaith Worker Justice and the National Employment Law Project. At Brandeis, he is a member of the board of advisors at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the board of directors at the National Center for Jewish Film. In 2006, he established the Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, which supports Brandeis students, enhances campus life and promotes the social-justice issues championed by Justice Louis Brandeis throughout his life. Bernstein received the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award in 2007. He holds a law degree from University of Chicago Law School and a Master of Laws in labor law from New York University School of Law.

Germaine Ingram
Germaine Ingram
Cultural Strategist, Performance Artist and Vocal/Dance Improviser
Pennsylvania

Germaine Ingram is a cultural strategist, percussive dancer/choreographer, performance artist and vocal/dance improviser. Through choreography, music composition, performance, writing, production, oral-history projects and designing and leading artist learning environments, she explores themes related to history, collective memory and social justice. Ingram is currently co-leading a two-year project that investigates the history and evolution of diverse expressions of Yoruba Diaspora traditions since the mid-20th century in her hometown of Philadelphia.

She was a 2010 Pew Foundation Fellow in the Arts and a 2014 resident fellow at the Sacatar Institute in Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil, to name just a few of her honors. Ingram practiced law for 30 years before becoming a full-time artist, serving as general counsel and deputy to the superintendent of the Philadelphia School District and teaching law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Among her nonprofit board commitments are the Leeway Foundation, which funds women and transgender artists, and the Picasso Project, which supports high quality arts education at inner-city public schools.

Jay Kaufman
Jay Kaufman ’68, MA’73
Founding Director, Beacon Leadership Collaborative
Massachusetts

Jay R. Kaufman served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1995 through 2018, and now leads a nonprofit organization, Beacon Leadership Collaborative, which provides leadership education, mentoring and professional-development support to those in, and aspiring to, public life.

In the House, Kaufman chaired the Committee on Revenue and led the charge for a major reform of state and local taxes. He also initiated major pension reforms, environmental protection legislation and policies to promote social and economic justice. His "Open House" monthly public policy forum was recognized in 1997 with the Beacon Award as the nation's best televised government relations series. Kaufman's new nonprofit offers workshops and consultation to individuals, groups and institutions working in the public square. He brings to the collaborative three decades of teaching and project design and management in the public and nonprofit sectors.

 holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy and master's degree in history from Brandeis as well as a master's in history from New York University. He serves as the Distinguished Legislative Mentor for the Ethics Center's national ENACT project.

Jamie Metzl portrait
Jamie Metzl
Nonresident Senior Fellow for Technology and National Security, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council
New York

Jamie Metzl is a senior fellow for technology and national security at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. An expert in Asian affairs and biotechnology policy, he is also a novelist, blogger, syndicated columnist and media commentator. Metzl previously served as executive vice president of the Asia Society, deputy staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, senior coordinator for international public information at the U.S. State Department, director for multilateral affairs on the National Security Council and as a human rights officer for the United Nations in Cambodia.

He is the author three novels and two works of nonfiction, including his latest book, "Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity." A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow, Metzl is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University, and holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a doctorate in Asian history from the University of Oxford.

Ángela María Pérez Mejía
Ángela María Pérez Mejía
Chief Cultural Manager, Banco de la República
Colombia

Ángela María Pérez Mejía is chief cultural manager of Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, which has a network of 28 cultural facilities around the country. She leads the cultural national initiative "Let Peace Speak Up," a series of physical and digital cultural products intended for use by peacebuilding agents working to transform Colombian communities. Pérez Mejía has been a member of the Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard University for 10 years and recently joined the ICAA Ideas Council at the International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She was an associate professor of Latin American literature at Brandeis University, where she taught for 10 years. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, a master's degree from the University of Maryland and a PhD from the State University of New York. Her book, "La Geografía de los Tiempos Difíciles," received the Casa de las Américas Prize in 2000, and her screenplay for the film "Rodrigo D" was honored at the Latin American Film Festival in New York in 1998.

Elaine Reuben portrait
Elaine Reuben ’63
Academic and Philanthropist
Washington, DC

Elaine Reuben is a graduate of Brandeis University and holds a doctorate in English, American and dramatic literature from Stanford University. A national leader in the development of women's studies and affirmative attention to women faculty, she has co-chaired the Modern Language Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession; served as director of women's studies at the George Washington University Graduate School; was national coordinator of the National Women's Studies Association; taught in the American studies program at the University of Maryland, College Park; and directed the NWSA/FIPSE Project to Improve Service Learning in Women's Studies. Reuben has also served as a special assistant to the deputy undersecretary for management at the U.S. Department of Education and was acting executive director of the Network of East-West Women.

At Brandeis, Reuben serves on the Board of Fellows as well as the board of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, where she established the Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series as a joint project of the institute and the Feminist Press. Her philanthropy has supported the Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts; the Robert D. Farber University and Archives and Special Collections' acquisition of the Lilith Magazine archive; undergraduate scholarships; and the Ethics Center's Peacebuilding and the Arts programs.

norbert weissberg
Norbert Weissberg
Chairman, Package Research Laboratory and Stapling Machines Co.
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 Co., a manufacturer of machine tools. From 1998 to 2002, he was chairman of the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Israel, and for 12 years prior was president of Ascom Holding Inc., a holding company for seven operating companies owned by Swiss investors.

Weissberg serves on the Ethics Center International Advisory Board as well as on the boards of Medical Development for Israel, the American Jewish Historical Society, the "New Group" Theater and the Brooklyn Historical Society. In 2013, he received the Virtuoso Award from Concert Artists Guild in recognition of his philanthropic work on its behalf, and has since become chairman of that organization. Since 2010, Weissberg and his wife, former board member Judith Schneider, have supported the Advocacy for Policy Change Initiative, a model program that has engaged Brandeis undergraduates with the legislative process on key, state-level social issues. A generous gift from Weissberg and Schneider enabled the center to launch a national expansion of that model in 2015, called ENACT: The Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation.

Founding Chair

Ted Sorensen
Theodore C. Sorensen
Lawyer, Author and Public Servant
(1928-2010)

The late Theodore C. Sorensen (1928-2010) dedicated himself to serving the global community both as a public official and an international lawyer. For 11 years, he was policy adviser, legal counsel and speechwriter 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 law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, in New York City. 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 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 at Harvard's Kennedy School. 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.

remembering ted Sorensen

Past Members

  • Morton Abramowitz, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation, Washington, D.C.

  • Diego Arria, Former Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations*

  • Nancy Kassebaum Baker, Former U.S. Senator, Kansas

  • Thomas Buergenthal, H’11, Former Judge, International Court of Justice, Washington, D.C.

  • James Carroll, H’08, Author and Journalist*

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

  • Mark Friedman, Medical Director, Boston Health Economics, Massachusetts
  • Richard J. Goldstone, H’04, Justice of the Constitutional Court (ret.), South Africa**

  • Kerry Kennedy, Founder and President, Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, New York*

  • Ismat Kittani (1929-2001), Former Diplomat Representing Iraq*

  • Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Singapore*

  • Kishore Mahbubani, Scholar and Former Diplomat, Singapore

  • Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Former President, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, New York*

  • Zia Mody, Partner, AZB & Partners, Mumbai, India

  • Sari Nusseibeh, Former President, Al-Quds University, Palestine*

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

  • Michael Ratner ’66 (1943-2016), Former President Emeritus, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York City

  • Judith Schneider, Psychologist, New York*

  • George P. Shultz, H’98, Former U.S. Secretary of State, California*

  • Paul Simon (1928-2003), Former U.S. Senator, Illinois*

  • Stephen J. Solarz ’62, H’92 (1940-2010), Former U.S. Representative, New York*

  • Gillian Sorensen, Special Adviser, United Nations Foundation

  • Theodore C. Sorensen (1928-2010), Distinguished Lawyer and Author; Adviser and Speechwriter to President John F. Kennedy***

  • Joshua Steiner, Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group, New York*

  • Shiranee Tilakawardane, Justice of the Supreme Court , Sri Lanka (ret.)

  • Liv Ullmann, H’93, Film Director and Writer, Norway*

  • Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Permanent Representative of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to the United Nations, Amman, Jordan

* Founding Member
** Founding Member and Former Chair
*** Founding Chair