Prof. Catharine MacKinnon: “The Recognition of Rape as an Act of Genocide – Prosecutor v. Akayesu”

Prof. Catharine MacKinnon has specialized in gender equality issues under international and constitutional law and is currently the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School. Prof. MacKinnon holds a B.A. from Smith College, a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University where she was also the recipient of a National Science Foundation fellowship. She has taught at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Osgoode Hall, Basel and Columbia universities, and has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford). In 2000 Prof. MacKinnon won with co-counsel a damage award of $745 million in the lawsuit Kadic v. Karadzic (under the US Alien Tort Statute), where she was representing Bosnian women survivors of Serbian genocidal sexual crimes.