REGISTER Now - How Can We Achieve Equity and Justice? A Look at Human Rights Law on May 6th at 6pm 

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Please join us on Zoom for "How Can We Achieve Equity and Justice? A Look at Human Rights Law" as part of our Fostering Understanding in Our Community Outreach.

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Our Distinguished Speakers:
Dr. James Armstead & Harold Victor Conde, Esq.

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Dr. James Armstead is a retired professor of Strategy and International law from the US Naval War College. He has taught international law, strategy and national security policy for nearly 50 years. Professor Armstead has served on faculties at Stanford University, Pepperdine University, the University of California, the University of Nevada, Southern University the US Naval Postgraduate School, Lewis University, the Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University. He has also lectured at the British Joint Services Staff College and taught as a visiting professor at the Universite d' Pau in France and as an exchange professor at Richmond College at the University of London. He has lectured at senior staff colleges in Poland, Austria, Germany, Slovenia, Estonia and Malawi.as well as the US Army War College, and at military academies in the United States, Poland, Ukraine and South Africa.. Jim has served as a research associate at the RAND Corp which sponsored his dissertation "Lightweight Power Projection" and has been Chief of Staff to a Member of Congress. Working for the Department of Defense he served on negotiation teams enlarging NATO with the accession of Poland, Hungary, Montenegro, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Albania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Jim has assisted in drafting constitutional reforms in Montenegro, South Africa, Poland, the Congo, and Estonia and has served Of Counsel to the American Bar Association Office of Human Rights and served legal adviser to the US - Canadian Acid Rain Treaty negotiations.

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Dr Armstead received his undergraduate education at the University of Illinois in history and anthropology and was graduated in 1968, received his J.D.in 1975 from DePaul University, returned to the University of Illinois where he undertook graduate studies in public policy and economics and was awarded a Ph.D. in public policy analysis from Pacific Western University In 1981. Dr. Armstead also holds an advanced certificate in International Law from the Instituto Superiori Internationale Criminali Science in Siracusa, Italy and is the recipient of 3 honorary doctorates. During his career he served in the United Nations Secretariat where he was the English language editor of the Treaty of Rome which created the International Criminal Court at the Hague and has served on missions with the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as an international election observer in Belarus, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Jim served as an Armor, JAG, Inspector General and Civil Affairs Officer in the United States Army, the US Army Reserves and National Guard in staff and command assignments from battalion to corps level eventually serving in the Pentagon as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Army.

Prof Armstead resides in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California and continues to write and lecture.

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H. Victor Condé is an international human rights lawyer and educator based in California and Europe. A graduate of Loyola High in LA, BA from UC Irvine in Classical Philology, he holds a Juris Doctor from UC Davis Law School, an MA in International Human Rights theory and practice, an LLM in International and Comparative Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the Univ. of Essex, UK, and holds the Diplôme in International and Comparative Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. He served as professor of human rights and humanitarian law at Trinity Law School in California, and lectured at the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, the University of California at Irvine, the Catholic University of Brussels, and Faculty of Law, University of Strasbourg, France, and has served as a human rights legal consultant to NGOs and to the O.S.C.E. He serves as a demonstration legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild in LA. A member of the California, Hawaii and Supreme Court Bars he practiced law part time in California, predominantly in refugee and asylum cases and still travels globally as an international human rights trainer for Hardwired Inc., a human rights NGO focusing on the human right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

He is co-author of Human Rights and the United States 3d ed., 2300 pp., published in 2017, and other books and articles on international and comparative human rights and humanitarian law.

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