Professional Development Programs from my time in Academic Affairs, 2019 - 2025
Professional Development for 2025
03 April 2025 - "Book launch for the Canadian Handbook
on International Humanitarian Law"
presented by The Human Rights Research
and Education Centre (HRREC) and
the Canadian Red Cross
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Date and time
Apr 3, 2025 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Registration required to receive the link. Format and location Virtual & Webinar on Zoom |
Language
English Audience General public Organized by HRREC & the Canadian Red Cross |
Canada’s approach to war has shaped the way in which it interprets and implements international humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of armed conflict as it is also called. The Canadian Handbook on International Humanitarian Law, published in 2024, provides a useful “first stop” for the Canadian legal community on key topics in international humanitarian law, in a way which pays particular attention to Canadian sources, interpretations, applications and practices where they exist and are publicly available.
At the same time, given the iterative nature of the development of international law, especially customary international law, the book will also be useful to practitioners and scholars internationally. Indeed, despite the paucity of publicly available material, Canada has been a regular actor in this area of law and its contributions to the development of international humanitarian law should be highlighted.
Throughout The Canadian Handbook on International Humanitarian Law, the authors address the relationship between theory and practice, the implications and challenges of operating with partners and allies, and tensions between different state, civil society and critical perspectives. The authors aim to provide useful guidance and indicate Canadian resources for all engaged with international humanitarian law issues, from the field to the courtroom, and to the classroom.
The handbook also addresses the interplay between international humanitarian law and other relevant legal regimes, notably international human rights law and international criminal law. In a moment when international humanitarian law issues have garnered the attention of the public, as well as specialists, this handbook is timely and essential reading.
Join us for this fascinating discussion with the authors Steve Tiwa Fomekong, Catherine Gribbin, Andrew Thomson and Christopher Waters who will present this new publication and take you behind the scenes in the making of this first-ever Canadian-focused IHL book!
At the same time, given the iterative nature of the development of international law, especially customary international law, the book will also be useful to practitioners and scholars internationally. Indeed, despite the paucity of publicly available material, Canada has been a regular actor in this area of law and its contributions to the development of international humanitarian law should be highlighted.
Throughout The Canadian Handbook on International Humanitarian Law, the authors address the relationship between theory and practice, the implications and challenges of operating with partners and allies, and tensions between different state, civil society and critical perspectives. The authors aim to provide useful guidance and indicate Canadian resources for all engaged with international humanitarian law issues, from the field to the courtroom, and to the classroom.
The handbook also addresses the interplay between international humanitarian law and other relevant legal regimes, notably international human rights law and international criminal law. In a moment when international humanitarian law issues have garnered the attention of the public, as well as specialists, this handbook is timely and essential reading.
Join us for this fascinating discussion with the authors Steve Tiwa Fomekong, Catherine Gribbin, Andrew Thomson and Christopher Waters who will present this new publication and take you behind the scenes in the making of this first-ever Canadian-focused IHL book!
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26 March 2025 - "Beyond the Bite: Making Informed,
Ethical Choices about What We Eat"
presented by Dr. Adam Fletz
St. Philip's College
At 1:30 PM on Wednesday, 26 March 2025, Dr. Adam Feltz, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma, gave a special talk in our conference room at St. Philip's College.
Event Title: "Beyond the Bite: Making Informed, Ethical Choices about What We Eat"
The Presentation: Philosophers have provided many arguments about the ethics of consuming animals as food, but those have had limited impact on animal product consumption even for those exposed to the arguments. This talk gives some potential explanations for why those arguments are not effective (even if they are sound) and also provides some ways to help people make more informed, perhaps more ethical, choices about animal consumption.
Event Title: "Beyond the Bite: Making Informed, Ethical Choices about What We Eat"
The Presentation: Philosophers have provided many arguments about the ethics of consuming animals as food, but those have had limited impact on animal product consumption even for those exposed to the arguments. This talk gives some potential explanations for why those arguments are not effective (even if they are sound) and also provides some ways to help people make more informed, perhaps more ethical, choices about animal consumption.
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24 March 2025 - Global Peace Conference: Nurturing Hope
presented by Emily Rodriguez
Our Lady of the Lake University
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24 March 2025 - Town Hall Meeting: Courtney Gore
Interviewed by Prof. Neil Lewis
Northwest Vista College
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18 February 2025 - "Lift a Daughter - for Life"
presented by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish,
and Naomi Shihab Nye,
University of the Incarnate Word
CHRISTUS Heritage Hall at the Village at Incarnate Word. Lift a Daughter--for Life. Delicious Middle Eastern food, music. Dr. Abuelaish speaking. Learn of Our Scholars – Daughters for Life Foundation Help build a San Antonio Scholarship for a Middle Eastern Woman through the Daughters for Life Foundation which was founded by Dr. Abuelaish.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American poet and author who was the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019-2022, will share a few poems. Young voices speak for a more peaceful world: Randa Elaydi from Gaza: Hajar Moshishadri, Japanese Iranian American; Beni Resendiz, Israeli American: Teo Reyes, Central American background: Jacky Zavala Aguila from Mexico.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American poet and author who was the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate from 2019-2022, will share a few poems. Young voices speak for a more peaceful world: Randa Elaydi from Gaza: Hajar Moshishadri, Japanese Iranian American; Beni Resendiz, Israeli American: Teo Reyes, Central American background: Jacky Zavala Aguila from Mexico.
23 January 2025 - "Saving Private Ryan:
Lessons on the Law of Armed Conflict"
presented by Thomas Harper, J.D.
Senior Counsel, IHL Program
American Red Cross
Topic: Saving Private Ryan: Lessons on the Law of Armed Conflict Description: "We all have orders, and we have to follow 'em. That supersedes everything, including your mothers." Saving Private Ryan redefined the war movie genre when it debuted. Its moving story of a squad of soldiers during the 1944 D-Day invasion remains just as powerful today. How can Captain Miller, Sergeant Horvath, Private Miller, and the film's other central characters help us better understand the law of armed conflict? Join the American Red Cross IHL Program for an entertaining and educational look at one of the finest war films of all time. Online program archived at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBblLUXLH8s
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Professional Development for 2024
19 January 2024 - The Conference of the Intercollegiate Civil
Disagreement Partnership
Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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17 January 2024 - Rotary Club of San Antonio's Role in the
International Peace Leadership Academy
of Northern Ireland
presented by JC Clapsaddle
Witte Museum in San Antonio
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Professional Development for 2023
25 January 2023 - Solidarity, Racial Healing, and Narrative
Change with Dr. Cornel West
presented at San Antonio College
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Professional Development for 2022
17 November 2022 - The Power of Asking "How" - A Key to Understanding the Development of International Humanitarian Law?
This event marked the launch of the International Review of the Red Cross' double-edition entitled "How international humanitarian law develops". For more information:
https://www.icrc.org/en/event/past-present-and-future-development-international-humanitarian-law-zooming-how [Uploaded on Nov 30, 2022]
https://www.icrc.org/en/event/past-present-and-future-development-international-humanitarian-law-zooming-how [Uploaded on Nov 30, 2022]
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IRRC No. 920-921 November 2022
The power of asking “how” – a key to understanding the development of IHL?
Many enquiries and investigations begin with asking: Who? What? When? Where? and Why?: the “Five W's”. However, failing to add “How?” to that list can neglect a powerful analytical tool – a door-opener for countless more technical and in-depth questions and queries.1
Therefore, the questioning “how international humanitarian law (IHL) develops” sounds deceptively simple. If asked to promptly answer, many readers of the Interntional Review of the Red Cross would utter the following lines of thought: “it is developed by States as main actors, but there is also a role for the International Committee of the Red Cross as guardian of IHL”, followed by “one also needs to account for the fact that non-state armed groups are bound by rules they did not negotiate nor formally agree with, and for the fact that the international criminal tribunals have pushed certain interpretations of the law in a direction which has become authoritative”.
Several articles looking at our era grapple with the diversification of instruments in which States include IHL rules. Virtually every textbook of public international law will have, among its opening chapters, one about the “sources” of international law, closely tied to the text of Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.2 IHL textbooks will duly follow this line by introducing the substance of the main IHL treaties, and by affirming the important complementary role of customary law for a broader understanding of this body of law.
And yet, anno 2022, anyone limiting their study of IHL to the rules of customary and treaty law would only be missing important parts of the overall landscape. Generally speaking, after the Second World War, there have been three distinct IHL treaty-making “waves”: (i) the four 1949 Geneva Conventions; (ii) the two 1977 Additional Protocols; and (iii) a number of treaties on specific topics, such as cultural property and treaties pertaining to the regulation or prohibition of certain weapons. Post-1977, it was particularly in the latter field that States maintained a healthy appetite for the negotiation of new treaties. Some of these enjoy near universal ratification, while others see a clear split between two distinct categories of States: the “have nots” of a particular type of weapon ratify en masse, whereas the few “haves” refuse to join.
In yet other instances States decide to go at it solo altogether, for example by issuing unilateral normative commitments on a particular IHL topic, for example as formulate as a unilaterally declared “policy”, embedded in that State's military manual. When doing so, they conveniently sideline the usual need to reach an agreement with those that they may not fully agree with, including potential future enemies during an armed conflict.
What these non-treaty regulatory initiatives of the last decades have in common is that they virtually always state that (i) they are not meant to modify IHL rules, as found in existing treaty and customary law; and (ii) they are by no means to be considered binding. “Soft law” and other non-binding norms are not unique to IHL, public international law or law in general. However, the jury is still out on whether the proliferation of non-binding norms as the go-to formula to address new IHL challenges is either positive or worrisome, or somewhere in the middle of both. For sure, in the current geopolitical and multilateral climate, international standard-setting through non-binding norms may be the best we can wish for. Nevertheless, for all the time and effort it might take to negotiate treaties and have them entered into force, the enormous added value of a legally binding normative order based on a declared consensus among States should not be lightly underestimated.
Ultimately, the risk is not necessarily one of a normative void in IHL. After all, the creation of some normative content has been welcomed by States. The real risk is one of normative indeterminacy: a flurry of rules has been created with States “somehow”, yet not formally, involved. Informal processes cannot produce formally binding rules. The rules such processes generate float around anyone's normative assessment of whether conduct by Parties to an armed conflict is or is not lawful, yet ultimately they fail to provide us with a clear and authoritative answer.
Last, but not least, in addition to our usual “selected articles”, this edition of the Review also contains, and starts with, a unique interview with former International Committee of the Red Cross President, Mr Peter Maurer – reflecting on the changes observed throughout his decade (2012–2022) at the helm of the organization.
• 1G. J. Hart, “The Five W's: An Old Tool for the New Task of Audience Analysis”, Technical Communication, Vol. 43, No. 2, 996. The article is also available at: www.geoff-hart.com/resources/995-998/five-w.htm (internet references were accessed in October 2022).01
• 2“The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply: (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; (b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; and (d) subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.” Statute of the International Court of Justice, Art. 38, available at: www.icj-cij.org/en/statute.02
Download PDF: Continue reading #IRRC No. 920-921
https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/editorial-the-power-of-asking-how-a-key-to-understanding-the-development-of-ihl-920?fbclid=IwY2xjawJT0nNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbXnc3U6gbHOhRHftiROVWnrQCLYbqev9AW67XB8x6nb899hZcq19BEyoQ_aem_fp9WYUeQxEqmnqkCvxh65w
The power of asking “how” – a key to understanding the development of IHL?
Many enquiries and investigations begin with asking: Who? What? When? Where? and Why?: the “Five W's”. However, failing to add “How?” to that list can neglect a powerful analytical tool – a door-opener for countless more technical and in-depth questions and queries.1
Therefore, the questioning “how international humanitarian law (IHL) develops” sounds deceptively simple. If asked to promptly answer, many readers of the Interntional Review of the Red Cross would utter the following lines of thought: “it is developed by States as main actors, but there is also a role for the International Committee of the Red Cross as guardian of IHL”, followed by “one also needs to account for the fact that non-state armed groups are bound by rules they did not negotiate nor formally agree with, and for the fact that the international criminal tribunals have pushed certain interpretations of the law in a direction which has become authoritative”.
Several articles looking at our era grapple with the diversification of instruments in which States include IHL rules. Virtually every textbook of public international law will have, among its opening chapters, one about the “sources” of international law, closely tied to the text of Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice.2 IHL textbooks will duly follow this line by introducing the substance of the main IHL treaties, and by affirming the important complementary role of customary law for a broader understanding of this body of law.
And yet, anno 2022, anyone limiting their study of IHL to the rules of customary and treaty law would only be missing important parts of the overall landscape. Generally speaking, after the Second World War, there have been three distinct IHL treaty-making “waves”: (i) the four 1949 Geneva Conventions; (ii) the two 1977 Additional Protocols; and (iii) a number of treaties on specific topics, such as cultural property and treaties pertaining to the regulation or prohibition of certain weapons. Post-1977, it was particularly in the latter field that States maintained a healthy appetite for the negotiation of new treaties. Some of these enjoy near universal ratification, while others see a clear split between two distinct categories of States: the “have nots” of a particular type of weapon ratify en masse, whereas the few “haves” refuse to join.
In yet other instances States decide to go at it solo altogether, for example by issuing unilateral normative commitments on a particular IHL topic, for example as formulate as a unilaterally declared “policy”, embedded in that State's military manual. When doing so, they conveniently sideline the usual need to reach an agreement with those that they may not fully agree with, including potential future enemies during an armed conflict.
What these non-treaty regulatory initiatives of the last decades have in common is that they virtually always state that (i) they are not meant to modify IHL rules, as found in existing treaty and customary law; and (ii) they are by no means to be considered binding. “Soft law” and other non-binding norms are not unique to IHL, public international law or law in general. However, the jury is still out on whether the proliferation of non-binding norms as the go-to formula to address new IHL challenges is either positive or worrisome, or somewhere in the middle of both. For sure, in the current geopolitical and multilateral climate, international standard-setting through non-binding norms may be the best we can wish for. Nevertheless, for all the time and effort it might take to negotiate treaties and have them entered into force, the enormous added value of a legally binding normative order based on a declared consensus among States should not be lightly underestimated.
Ultimately, the risk is not necessarily one of a normative void in IHL. After all, the creation of some normative content has been welcomed by States. The real risk is one of normative indeterminacy: a flurry of rules has been created with States “somehow”, yet not formally, involved. Informal processes cannot produce formally binding rules. The rules such processes generate float around anyone's normative assessment of whether conduct by Parties to an armed conflict is or is not lawful, yet ultimately they fail to provide us with a clear and authoritative answer.
Last, but not least, in addition to our usual “selected articles”, this edition of the Review also contains, and starts with, a unique interview with former International Committee of the Red Cross President, Mr Peter Maurer – reflecting on the changes observed throughout his decade (2012–2022) at the helm of the organization.
• 1G. J. Hart, “The Five W's: An Old Tool for the New Task of Audience Analysis”, Technical Communication, Vol. 43, No. 2, 996. The article is also available at: www.geoff-hart.com/resources/995-998/five-w.htm (internet references were accessed in October 2022).01
• 2“The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply: (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states; (b) international custom, as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; and (d) subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations, as subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law.” Statute of the International Court of Justice, Art. 38, available at: www.icj-cij.org/en/statute.02
Download PDF: Continue reading #IRRC No. 920-921
https://international-review.icrc.org/articles/editorial-the-power-of-asking-how-a-key-to-understanding-the-development-of-ihl-920?fbclid=IwY2xjawJT0nNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHbXnc3U6gbHOhRHftiROVWnrQCLYbqev9AW67XB8x6nb899hZcq19BEyoQ_aem_fp9WYUeQxEqmnqkCvxh65w
Professional Development for 2021
15 December 2021 - Preparing for War: The Making of the
Geneva Conventions
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04 May 2021 - The Law of Star Wars: International
Humanitarian Law in a galaxy far far away...
"The Law of Star Wars: International Humanitarian Law in a galaxy far far away..."
International Humanitarian Law (aka Law of Armed Conflict) issue spotting within the Star Wars universe.
International Humanitarian Law (aka Law of Armed Conflict) issue spotting within the Star Wars universe.
27 April 2021 - 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference
"The 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference will be an important event where we transition from rhetoric to action. Where we come together to interrogate what a genuinely transformed humanitarian system can look like based on economic, environmental and political justice for affected communities. Where the affected communities, local organisations, the business community and their national governments are the ‘humanitarians’.
The 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference will work to determine where change is needed and what a reshaping of the humanitarian ecosystem might look like, from the actors involved and ways of working to the very definition of what constitutes a humanitarian crisis."
The 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference will work to determine where change is needed and what a reshaping of the humanitarian ecosystem might look like, from the actors involved and ways of working to the very definition of what constitutes a humanitarian crisis."
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Professional Development for 2020
10 December 2020 - Human Rights Day 2020 presented by the Human Rights Law Committee of
the International Bar Association
Webinar - Human Rights Day 2020
A day of virtual events co-presented by the IBA Business and Human Rights Committee and the IBA Human Rights Law Committee to recognise Human Rights Day, including several panel sessions that address different issues involving international human rights. Supported by the International Human Rights Committee of the State Bar of Texas
Session 2 - An overlapping maze: A comparative law view on how multinationals cope With laws, hard and soft, impacting human rights
10 December, 1815 – 1915 GMT
This session with explore how multinationals cope with the widely varied laws and offer a comparative view of the differences in laws that may apply, with a consideration of how international projects can be designed and managed in this environment.
A day of virtual events co-presented by the IBA Business and Human Rights Committee and the IBA Human Rights Law Committee to recognise Human Rights Day, including several panel sessions that address different issues involving international human rights. Supported by the International Human Rights Committee of the State Bar of Texas
Session 2 - An overlapping maze: A comparative law view on how multinationals cope With laws, hard and soft, impacting human rights
10 December, 1815 – 1915 GMT
This session with explore how multinationals cope with the widely varied laws and offer a comparative view of the differences in laws that may apply, with a consideration of how international projects can be designed and managed in this environment.
Professional Development for 2019
20 November 2019 - International Education Workshop
As part of the 2019 International Education Week, Dr. Derick Wilson, our 2019-2020 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, presented a Faculty Development workshop on International Education. #icrc #redcross #ihl
