National Advisory Council

Leila Sadat is the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at Washington University School of Law and the Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. She is an internationally recognized expert on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and serves as Special Advisor on Crimes Against Humanity to Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda of the ICC. Professor Sadat is also the director of the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative, a multi-year project to study the problem of crimes against humanity and draft a comprehensive convention addressing their punishment and prevention. She is a former member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; served as the Alexis de Tocqueville Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in Paris, France; and is the author of several well-respected books.

Benjamin Ferencz was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and served as chief prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the 12 Nuremberg Trials. All of the 22 defendants were convicted. Ferencz later became a leading advocate of the International Criminal Court, publishing several books on the subject. Since the establishment of the ICC, he has campaigned for full U.S. participation without reservations. In 1988, while working as an adjunct professor of international law at Pace University, Ferencz co-authored “PlanetHood: The Key to Your Future,” which calls for a system of international law including a global congress.

Harris Wofford, who served as U.S. senator from Pennsylvania from 1991 to 1995, founded the world federalist group Student Federalists as a teenager, with the organization sprouting 30 chapters. He went on to work for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and to advise Martin Luther King Jr. Wofford served in the Kennedy Administration, working on civil rights and helping to create the Peace Corps, and later became president of Bryn Mawr College. He was appointed to the Senate in May 1991 on the death of the incumbent, and was subsequently elected to the seat six months later by a 10-point margin after starting off 40 points behind his opponent in the polls. Since leaving the Senate, he has served on the boards of several charities and service organizations.

Randy Kehler is a pacifist activist who served 22 months in prison for returning his draft card in 1969 and refusing to seek exemption as a conscientious objector, seeing that as a form of cooperation with the Vietnam war effort. He played a key role in persuading Daniel Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers, and later served as executive director of the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Kehler and his wife Betsy Corner refused to pay taxes for military expenditures, resulting in the federal seizure of their Massachusetts home in 1989. They continue to withhold their federal income taxes.

Andrea Cousins is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who has practiced for more than 30 years. She has a doctorate in anthropology from Harvard University and a doctor of psychology degree from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. Her father, journalist and peace activist Norman Cousins, served as president of the World Federalist Association and chairman of the Committee for Sane Nuclear Policy, and was honored with recognitions including the United Nations Peace Medal.

James T. Ranney is an adjunct professor of international law at Widener Law School. He co-founded the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center in Missoula, Montana, and served as a legal consultant to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. He has written extensively on the abolition of nuclear weapons and the establishment of international dispute resolution mechanisms, most notably in 2017’s “World Peace Through Law: Replacing War with the Global Rule of Law.