Belinda Cooper

Belinda Cooper is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York and a co-founder of its Program on Citizenship and Security. She teaches and lectures on human rights and international law and is the editor of “War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg,” which explores the interconnections between the Nuremberg tribunal and today’s international criminal tribunals. She has taught human rights, international law, transitional justice and gender and law at Humboldt University in Berlin, the New School, Seton Hall Law School and Ohio Northern University Law School, and is currently an adjunct professor at NYU’s Global Affairs Program.

Cooper lived in Berlin, Germany from 1987-1994, working closely with members of the East German opposition in 1988-89 and following developments in the region after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She returned to Berlin in 2002 as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She has written for a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times, Newsweek, World Policy Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. A fluent German speaker, Cooper has contributed to German-language print media, radio and TV, appeared as a guest on German radio, and taken part in numerous panel discussions in Germany. She is also a translator of German scholarly books and articles, including many texts on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany and, most recently, a textbook on international criminal law, and has worked as a translator on the case of Turkish-German Guantanamo detainee Murat Kurnaz.

Cooper has also taken part in human rights fact-finding missions and has coauthored reports on domestic violence in Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Tanzania.

Cooper graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in History from Yale College and received her J.D. from Yale Law School.