Leora Kahn

Leora Kahn is founder and president of PROOF: Media for Social Justice.   She works on global projects with Amnesty International and the United Nations. Her 2007 book Darfur: 20 years of War and Genocide has won several awards and an exhibition of this work is traveling in the US under the auspices of the Holocaust Museum of Houston. Her book, Child Soldiers, published in November 2008, features an introductory essay by Louis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court. She curated an exhibition on child soldiers in collaboration with the UN’s Office on Children and Armed Conflict. It has traveled to Rome, New York, Bonn, Vienna, Mexico City as well as the United States. Ms. Kahn’s film credits include Rene and I, an award-winning documentary about the life an extraordinary woman who was experimented on by Josef Mengele during the Holocaust. She also co-produced Original Intent; a documentary that explores the judicial philosophy promoted by President George W. Bush and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. She was director of photography at Workman Publishing and Corbis as well as working at the New York Times Magazine, Time magazine and numerous other publications.

She had been a fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University where she conducts research on rescuers and rescuing behavior. She lectures and teaches widely on topics in human rights and photography and transitional justice. She is a Fulbright Senior Specialist and recently taught at University of Haifa. She is fellow at the Adrienne de Rothschild/Columbia University and Cambridge University for social entrepreneurs that involve starting a network between Jews and Muslims.

Her recent work has taken her to Rwanda, Cambodia and Bosnia where she has researched and interviewed rescuers from these genocides An exhibition comprised of photos and texts of these interviews is now traveling in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia as well as the United States, sponsored by the US State Department. She has developed a worldwide project on rape and transitional justice with partners, TRIAL and UNFPA.