Roger Polack
Schell Center Visiting Human Rights Fellow
Roger Polack is a Schell Center Visiting Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School and the Senior Legal Counsel for the Myanmar Human Rights Project.
Roger has extensive experience working on public international law and investigations. While in private legal practice, he was part of the team that sued Russia at the International Court of Justice for its human rights violations in Ukraine, and he led a major legal analysis of crimes against humanity and genocide resulting from Myanmar security forces’ atrocities against the Rohingya in 2017.
Roger also has substantial practical experience on issues surrounding corruption, terrorism, intelligence, and financial sanctions, having worked for the U.S. Government for a decade in these areas. He analyzed funding flows to Southeast Asian terrorist organizations as an intelligence analyst. Roger deployed to Afghanistan as an analyst and then as Deputy-Director of Intelligence for the Afghanistan Threat Finance Cell, leading investigations into insurgent financing sources and high-level corruption. He worked to implement sanctions-specific components of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement with Iran. Roger also reviewed mergers and acquisitions for national security concerns as part of the U.S. interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
Roger has his J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Political Science, Asian Studies, and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He speaks Thai and German and has studied Burmese and Arabic. Prior to joining the Schell Center, Roger ran for the U.S. Congressional seat in his home district in Southeast Wisconsin, winning the Democratic nomination.
