Founded in 1988 by Human Rights lawyer Donna Arzt to promote the study of international and comparative law.

When three dozen Syracuse University students were among the passengers killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight #103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, she founded an organization to offer moral and legal support to the families of the victims, reminding the world of the horrific human consequences of such terrorism. Donna also served as co-director of the Sierra Leone Project to confront the war crimes that had been perpetrated in the course of the civil war that had lasted there for a decade