UDHR50 Leadership Team
Chair, National Coordinating Committee for UDHR50
Ambassador vanden Heuvel currently serves as President
of the Franklin
and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. He began his public
career as Executive Assistant to William J. (Wild Bill)
Donovan during General Donovan’s tenure as United
States Ambassador to Thailand. He was Special Counsel to
Averill Harriman, then Governor of New York. He served as
Special Assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
He was elected Vice President to the New York State
Constitutional Convention and was Chairman of the
drafting committee of the proposed constitution in 1967.
By appointment of the Mayor, he was Chairman of the New
York City Board of Correction and then Chairman of the
New York State Commission on State/City Relations.
Ambassador vanden Heuvel is also Co-Chairman of the
Council of American Ambassadors, a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations, and Chairman of the Board of
Governors of the United Nations Association of the USA.
He was a Senior Partner of the New York law firm of
Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, and is now Counsel to
that firm while serving as Senior Advisor to Allen &
Company Incorporated. He has had extensive service in the
government of the United States -- as Deputy
Representative to the United Nations (1979-81) and as
Ambassador to the European office of the United Nations.
He is a graduate of Cornell University and the Cornell
University Law School where he was Editor-in-Chief of the
Law Review. A frequent media commentator on international
affairs, Ambassador vanden Heuvel is co-author of On His
Own: RFK 1964-68 (Doubleday). He is married to the former
Melinda Fuller.
Chair, Steering Committee for UDHR50
Ms.Gaer is Director of he Jacob Blaustein Institute
for the Advancement of Human Rights. Author, speaker, and
activist, she is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Board of Directors of the Andrei Sakharov
Foundation, a member of the International Human Rights
Council at the Carter Center, serves on the Steering
Committee of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki and is Vice
President of the International League for Human Rights.
Ms. Gaer is a graduate of Wellesley College and recipient
of its 1995 Alumnae Achievement Award, and holds advanced
degrees from Columbia University. She has been a public
member of several United States delegations: to the
Commission on Human Rights in Geneva (1994-97) as well as
to the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the
Fourth World Conference on Women (1995) and Habitat II.
Ms. Gaer was a co-founder and member of the Washington
Working Group on the Human Rights of Women. Previously,
she served as Executive Director for European Programs at
the United Nations Association of the United States, and
as Executive Director of the International League for
Human Rights.
Executive Director, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
Institute
Dr. Sears has served as Executive Director of the Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute since 1986. Between 1982 and
1986, Dr. Sears worked as a museum and history consultant
in positions such as Director of Research at the Newton
Planning Project where he developed an exhibition on the
history of Newton, Massachusetts as a classic American
suburb, and Project Director of the traveling exhibit
"Tourists in an Industrial Scene: Mauch Chunk
Pennsylvania" for the Mauch Chunk Historical Society
and Lehigh University Art Galleries. Other clients
included the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Berkshire
Museum, Scenic Hudson, and the Boston/Newton Local
History Collaborative. Dr. Sears has served as editor of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Future of Liberalism
(Meckler, 1990), FDR and His Contemporaries: Foreign
Perceptions of an American President (St. Martin’s
Press, 1992), and Franklin D. Roosevelt: the New Deal,
the Depression, and World War II in the September 1996
issue of Social Education. He is the author of Sacred
Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth
Century (Oxford University Press, 1989). Dr. Sears holds
a Ph.D. from Harvard University in American Civilization
(1972) and a BA Magna Cum Laude in English from Harvard
College (1965).
Director, Human Rights Office, Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt Institute
Mr. Cooper received his MA in Global Policy and
Conflict Resolution from New York University (1993) and a
Certificate in Peace Research from the University of Oslo
(1990) where he studied with senior staff members of the
Peace Research Institute of Oslo. In 1993 Mr. Cooper
founded Ploughshare Productions, a nonprofit organization
that provides consulting services to educational and arts
organizations. As Executive Director of the National
Shakespeare Company (1992-3), one of the nation's oldest
theatre companies, he brought classical theatre
productions to hundreds of communities across the United
States. As Director of Information Services (1988-92) he
managed campus and public information at New York
University - the country’s largest private
university. As Staff Manager of the AT&T InfoQuest
Center (1986-88) he directed the daily operation of a
state-of-the-art communications technology exhibit. He
holds a BFA in Drama from NYU (1986) and is married to
the author, Elizabeth Gilbert.
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