Eric Stover, director of UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center for more than a decade and an international expert in war crimes investigation, has been named to the law school faculty as an adjunct professor.
Stover, 54, who is working with Boalt’s International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC), brings more than 20 years of experience addressing human rights atrocities around the world. Stover testified for the prosecution at the 1984 trial of leaders of the military junta which ruled Argentina during the so-called “Dirty War” from 1976 to 1983, and assisted in efforts to locate “disappeared” children through the use of DNA and HLA testing. In the early 1990s, Stover took part in the first research on the social and medical consequences of land mines in Cambodia and other post-war countries.
During the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia, Stover served on several medical-legal investigations as an “Expert on Mission” to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Working with forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow, Stover examined mass graves of civilians killed by government death squads in Argentina and elsewhere. In 1995, he surveyed mass graves throughout Rwanda for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Stover said Boalt presents an opportunity to further develop an interdisciplinary approach to human rights issues and to train law students in developing ways to prevent abuse as well as address its consequences.
IHRLC Director Laurel Fletcher commented that in joining the law school faculty, “Stover deepens Boalt’s connections to other units on campus in ways that both expand our research and policy platforms in strategic areas and expand our curricular offerings.”