Memorial service planned for College of Law longtime professor Donna E. Arzt

Memorial service planned for College of Law longtime professor Donna E. ArztMarch 02, 2009Jaclyn D. Grossojgrosso@law.syr.edu

A memorial service for Dean’s Distinguished Research Scholar and Professor of Law Donna E. Arzt is planned for Friday, March 27, at 1 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. The services will be followed by a 2 p.m. ceremonial event at the H. Douglas Barclay Law Library with a collection from Arzt’s personal library. A reception will follow in the Heritage Alumni Lounge.

Arzt died on Nov. 15, 2008, after a long illness. She had been a professor in the Syracuse University College of Law since September 1988.

At the College of Law, she served as director of the Center for Global Law and Practice and founded and directed the Lockerbie Trial ~ Families Project, which informed the families of the 270 victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing about developments in the Lockerbie criminal trial as the trial took place in a Scottish courtroom in the Netherlands. She also founded and directed the Sierra Leone Project, in which faculty and students assisted the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was established by the United Nations and the country’s government at the end of the decade-long Sierra Leone civil war. She was named to the inaugural Bond, Schoeneck & King Distinguished Professorship at the College of Law in 2002.

Before coming to Syracuse, Arzt practiced public interest law in Boston and was an assistant attorney general for the state of Massachusetts in civil rights and regulation of charitable solicitation. She published numerous articles on human rights in the Soviet Union and the Middle East and served as a consultant to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Human Rights Watch, and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on population transfer.

She received the Michael J. Tryson Memorial Award for Excellence and Leadership in the field of human rights law. Her book “Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” was published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 1997.

Arzt earned a B.A. degree at Brandeis University, a J.D. degree at Harvard University and an LL.M. degree at Columbia University.

Contributions in her memory may be made to New Israel Fund, 1101 14th St. NW, Sixth Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005, or to a charity or reputable human rights organizations of the donor’s choice.