Harvey M. Weinstein

Bio

Harvey M. Weinstein, MD, MPH, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center, and a retired Clinical Professor in the School of Public Health. As Associate Director of the Human Rights Center from 1998-2005, he directed the Forced Migration and Health Project and was Co-Principal Investigator on three other projects – “Communities in Crisis; Justice, Accountability and Social Reconstruction in Rwanda and Former Yugoslavia, “Intrastate Conflict and Social Reconstruction”, and “Education for Reconciliation in Rwanda: Creating a History Curriculum After Genocide.” He is the author of “Psychiatry and The CIA: Victims of Mind Control” (APA Press, 1990) and co-editor of “My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community After Mass Atrocity” (Cambridge University Press, 2004). He was founding co-editor of the International Journal of Transitional Justice. Working with families who survived the genocide at Srebrenica in 1997 led him to focus on the question of how communities survive unspeakable horror and rebuild their lives. This led to investigative work in Rwanda, South Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Albania and elsewhere where human rights abuses destroy the fabric of societies but where the resilience of the human spirit leads to social repair and the regeneration of hope. His articles on empathy, reconciliation, social reconstruction, history and identity, and the limits of justice have earned him international recognition as a thoughtful critic of standardized approaches to the rebuilding of communities after repression and mass violence.

Weinstein has been a board member of Survivors International, a consultant to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Commission for Missing Persons, Physicians for Human Rights, the California State Refugee Health Program, the ICTY, International Criminal Court and the Project on Justice in Times of Transition of the Foundation for a Civil Society, the West Africa Transitional Justice Project and to organizations in Albania, South Africa, Kenya and Indonesia He is a past-chair of the Refugee and Immigrant Caucus of the American Public Health Association and has been a board member of the Jacob and Valeria Langloth Foundation (New York) and Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay (Berkeley). He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the recipient of the McGill University Medical Alumni Global Community Service Award.