Professor Zachary D. Kaufman, J.D., Ph.D., is an award-winning scholar and practitioner of Criminal Law, International Law, National Security Law, and Transitional Justice.

Professor Kaufman is currently Professor of Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he serves as Co-Faculty Advisor to the Florida Journal of International Law, Co-Faculty Advisor to the Criminal Law Society, and Faculty Advisor to the International Law Society. At the University of Florida, he also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Political Science and Center for African Studies.

Before joining the University of Florida faculty, Professor Kaufman taught at Stanford Law School, Yale University Department of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, Boston University School of Law, George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, University of Houston Law Center, and University of Puerto Rico School of Law. In addition, he was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and has held other academic appointments at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Stanford University, and New York University.

Professor Kaufman received his J.D. 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 co-founder and co-president of Yale Law Social Entrepreneurs). He received his D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and M.Phil., both in International Relations, from the University of Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar). He received his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University (where he earned several academic, leadership, athletic, and public service awards and was the student body president, a residential counselor, co-captain of the wrestling team, and an All American and Runner-up National Champion in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association).

Professor Kaufman is currently working on his fourth book, this one on the law and politics of bystanders and upstanders (under contract with Cambridge University Press). The three other books of which he is the author or editor are: United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics (Oxford University Press, 2016); Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities: Changing Our World (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012); and After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is also the author of more than 45 articles, essays, and book chapters, most of which are available on his Social Science Research Network (SSRN) page. His award-winning scholarship is published or forthcoming in the Boston College Law Review, Southern California Law Review, George Washington Law Review, Harvard International Law Journal, Harvard Journal on Legislation, Yale Journal of International Law, Yale Law & Policy Review, Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, Stanford Law & Policy Review, Emory International Law Review, Journal of International Criminal Justice, Criminal Law Forum, and other journals. He has also written for popular outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Daily News, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Miami Herald, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Foreign Policy, Forbes, Central African Magazine, the New Times (Rwanda), and both of the leading international law blogs (Just Security and Opinio Juris). His research has been supported by competitive grants from Yale Law School, Harvard University, the University of Houston, the International Criminal Justice Resource Center, the Minerva Center for the Study of the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, and Kindness.org.

Professor Kaufman has delivered more than 400 lectures around the world, including in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He has been interviewed or his research has been cited by numerous media outlets, such as the New York Times, National Public Radio, the BBC, NBC News, CNBC, Voice of America, Fox News, Telemundo, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, 90.1 FM KPFT Houston, the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Standard, Ebony magazine, the American Interest, Law360, Foreign Policy, Psychology Today, the Week, the Huffington Post, the Crime Report, Law & Crime, the Progressive Magazine, the Delaware Valley Journal, Canadian Broadcasting News, Rwandan Television, Turkish Radio Television Global, the Armenian Mirror-Spectator, Al Bawaba, Southeast Asia Globe, and podcasts at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the University of Houston Law Center

Professor Kaufman has served in all three branches of the U.S. government. In the judicial branch, he was a U.S. Supreme Court Fellow and clerk to a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In the legislative branch, he was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow on the U.S. 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 section 1232 of the National Defense Authorization Act). In the executive branch, he served at the U.S. Departments of State and Justice. 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.

Professor Kaufman has held many leadership positions in legal education and is involved in various academic organizations and think tanks. Professor Kaufman is actively involved in the American Society of International Law (ASIL), the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), and the Law and Society Association (LSA). In ASIL, he is the current Co-Chair of the Development Committee, Co-Chair of the Transitional Justice & Rule of Law Interest Group, past Co-Chair of the Human Rights Interest Group, past member of the Development Committee, and past member of the Midyear Meeting Research Forum Committee. In AALS, he is past Chair of the International Human Rights Section and current Executive Committee member of four sections: the Criminal Law Section, National Security Section, International Law Section, and International Human Rights Section. In LSA, he is the current Co-Organizer of the Collaborative Research Network (CRN) on Transitional Justice. In addition, Professor Kaufman currently serves as a member of the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee (which provides advice to the Law School and its Dean); Fellow of the Truman National Security Project; Board of Advisors member of Genocide Watch; and member of the American Political Science Association, International Studies Association, International Association of Genocide Scholars, and International Network of Genocide Scholars.

Professor Kaufman is actively involved in the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is currently a CFR Life Member and Member of the CFR International Affairs Fellowship Selection Committee. He is a former CFR Term Member and a former CFR International Affairs Fellow.

Professor Kaufman is deeply committed to the Association of Marshall Scholars (AMS). He is Vice President of the AMS Board of Directors and Chair of the Marshall Alumni Newsletter Committee. He currently serves on the Marshall Scholar Regional Selection Committee for Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and he previously served on the Marshall Scholar Regional Selection Committee for Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

Professor Kaufman dedicates a significant portion of his time to non-profit organizations and social enterprises. He is a Senior Fellow and, for 23 years, was a board member of Humanity in Action, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to protecting human and minority rights. From 2001 to 2015, he was the founder, president, and chair of the Board of Directors of the American Friends of the Kigali Public Library, which partnered with the Rotary Club of Kigali-Virunga (of which he is an honorary member) to build Rwanda’s first-ever public library, the Kigali Public Library (also known as Rwanda Library Services). The institution now serves as Rwanda’s national public library and focal point for the country’s annual “Rwanda Reads” literacy campaign. From 2011 to 2020, he was a member of the Board of Advisors (including as its chair from 2013 to 2016) of Indego Africa, a non-profit social enterprise that partners with cooperatives of artisan women in Rwanda and Ghana to bring their products to Western markets. He also served on Indego Africa’s Board of Directors from 2014 to 2016.

Professor Kaufman frequently consults for a wide array of individuals and organizations in the public and private sectors. He has advised, among others, two successful U.S. presidential campaigns, the White House National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sitting and prospective members of the U.S. Congress, the Lieutenant Governor of a U.S. state, the New York City Office of the Mayor, and Meta (formerly known as Facebook). He has also testified as an expert witness to the United Kingdom and Belgian parliaments.

Professor Kaufman has received numerous awards for his work. Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business students named him “A Leader of Our Generation,” Humanity in Action bestowed on him its Dr. Louis Rabineau Award to “recognize outstanding leadership,” the Diplomatic Courier and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy recognized him as one of the world’s “Top 99 Under 33 Foreign Policy Leaders,” the J.W. Saxe Memorial Fund awarded him its prize for public service, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court awarded him a certificate of commendation, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the Former Yugoslavia presented him with an award for “outstanding contributions to international criminal justice,” the Genocide Survivors Foundation and the Million Lives Genocide Relief Fund jointly presented him with the 2024 Human Rights Champion Award for “unwavering commitment to human rights and supporting survivors of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes,” and he was an invited delegate to the International Achievement Summit hosted by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.