The Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights at the Law School has announced two major appointments and awarded Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowships to three graduates of the school.

Two graduates of the Law School have been appointed to head the Schell Center, according to an announcement by Law School Dean Anthony Kronman. The new director is Paul Kahn '74 M.A., '75 M. Phil, '77 Ph.D., '80 J.D., the Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law at Yale, and the new executive director is James Silk '89 J.D., director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. Kahn succeeds Professor Harold Hongju Koh, who directed the Schell Center from 1993 to 1998 and is now assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor.

The Schell Center was established at the Law School in 1989, through the support of the John Merck Fund and friends of the late Orville H. Schell Jr., a noted New York City lawyer who was vice chairman of Helsinki Watch and chaired Americas Watch from its founding until his death in 1987.

The center continues to build on Schell's work through rigorous scholarship and human rights advocacy, and gives the Law School community and the wider public insights on human rights issues. The center sponsors fellowships, publications, an online human rights library (called DIANA), seminars, conferences and lectures throughout the year. The work of the Law School's Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Project and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic also fall under the domain of the Schell Center.

The Robert L. Bernstein Fellowships in International Human Rights were established at the Schell Center in 1997 to honor Bernstein's work in the human rights arena. The fellowships provide a year of financial support for up to three Law School graduates who wish to pursue international human rights work.

The 1999-2000 Bernstein Fellows are:

* Jonathan Freiman, who received his law degree from Yale in 1998. A three-year member of the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic, Frieman was its student director from May of 1997 until his graduation in February 1998. Prior to this, he worked on briefs and motions in cases before the Supreme Court and the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. After graduating from the Law School, Freiman was a visiting lecturer at Yale, where he taught an undergraduate seminar, "Collective Violence and Memory." The alumnus will use his Bernstein fellowship to research the teaching of international human rights law in three foreign nations and the United States, and develop a model international human rights curriculum that can be integrated into some of the core first-year law school classes.

* Jaya Ramji, who received her law diploma from Yale in May. Ramji was drawn to law school generally and Yale specifically because of her interest in international human rights. She worked on the Cambodian Genocide Program in 1996 and was budget director of the Lowenstein Project in 1997. In 1997, she received a Schell fellowship to work in Phnom Penh under the auspices of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Following that she worked with the Lowenstein Clinic for two years on the Doe v. Karadzic case, and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. As a Bernstein fellow, Ramji will work in Kampala, Uganda, creating a refugee rights program to serve the country's more than 200,000 refugees.

* Mark Templeton, a 1999 Law School graduate. Templeton, who came to Yale with a strong interest in international affairs and economic development, has concentrated on his professional development in human rights. He was the student director of the Lowenstein Clinic for a year, and participated in numerous international legal research and advocacy projects. Under a Coca-Cola World Fund at Yale grant, he worked with Ravi Nair, one of India's leading human rights activists, on projects relating to freedom of expression and the media in India. As a Bernstein fellow, Templeton will expand on his work in India, conducting documentation missions in Southeast Asia, and will train indigenous nongovernmental organizations in international human rights techniques and legal arguments. He plans to help Ravi Nair establish the Bangkok office of Human Rights Documentation Center, Inc., an organization that pressures governments and other human rights violators to respect human rights.

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