Professor Alexander K.A. Greenawalt Awarded 2024 Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship

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The Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University is proud to announce that Professor Alexander K.A. Greenawalt was awarded the 2024 Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship for his article, “With Intent to Destroy in Whole or in Part: Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and a Lost History,” which was published by Wisconsin Law Review earlier this year (2024 Wis. L. Rev. 933 (2024)).

The Goettel Prize was created in 2004 to encourage and recognize outstanding scholarship by members of the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University faculty. Each year, members of the tenured and tenure-track faculty are invited to submit their work for consideration (on an anonymous basis) by a selection committee of outside reviewers. This year's committee consisted of three distinguished law school professors: Professor Michael Herz, the Arthur Kaplan Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School; Professor Emily Morris, the David Brennan Professor of Law at University of Akron School of Law; and Professor Kerri Stone, Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law.

Professor Greenawalt’s article examines the meaning of the term “genocide,” drawing in part upon original research from the 1948 Genocide Convention, which first codified genocide as a crime under international law. In particular, the article engages ongoing debates about whether genocide necessarily entails the intent to physically destroy at least a substantial part of a protected group, or whether the crime of genocide can also apply to cases of so-called “ethnic cleansing” where atrocities are committed with the intent to displace a group. Selection committee member Professor Michael Herz commented that the article “grapples with a fundamental question, shows a mastery of the relevant legal materials and surrounding literature, casts new light on a familiar subject, is both scholarly and lawyerly, and is written in prose that is precise, fluid, and elegant.”

“I am extremely proud to have been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Goettel Prize by such a distinguished panel of external judges,” said Professor Greenawalt. “The article engages several themes: the ways in which contested claims of genocide often assume outsize importance in public discourse, the gap between popular and legal understandings of genocide, and the ways in which the confusing law of genocide has exacerbated these problems. I propose an alternate understanding of the crime that is more consistent with the lost history of the Genocide Convention and is also normatively preferable.”

Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Professor of Law Emily Waldman commented: “This article draws on Professor Greenawalt’s expertise in criminal law, international law, and the laws of war, as well as his original historical research on the topic of genocide. By presenting new discoveries from the drafting history of the Genocide Convention, Professor Greenawalt provides new insight into longstanding debates.”

Professor Greenawalt joined the Haub Law faculty in 2006 from the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, where his practice focused on international disputes. He was a teaching fellow at Columbia Law School in 2005 and was previously a clerk for the Honorable Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Professor Greenawalt is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was a James Kent Scholar and Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. He is now a three-time winner of the Goettel Prize for Faculty Scholarship. In 2018, his article "Targeted Capture" received the Goettel Prize and in 2016, his article “Foreign Assistance Complicity” was also selected for the Goettel Prize.=