In this seminar – "Any Witness Competent to Testify: Witnessing Practices at the 1967 Russell Tribunal on American War Crimes in Vietnam" – Leyla Belle Drake (Uppsala) sheds light on why, how, and to what effect different types of witnesses are deployed in response to mass violence – whether to prosecute war criminals, counter state narratives, or mobilize resistance to war, atrocity, and injustice.

The 1967 Russell Tribunal was an international, nongovernmental war crimes inquiry organized by elite public intellectuals and prominent activists in order to document, publicize, and condemn American war crimes in Vietnam. In her recently defended dissertation, Leyla Belle Drake reconsiders the Russell Tribunal’s impact and legacy by delving into its witnessing practices. Drake unpacks the functions and effects of the main witness categories to testify at the Russell Tribunal hearings, while also tracing the histories and logics of these witness figures in war crimes trials, political activism, transitional justice initiatives, and human rights work across the global twentieth century. In so doing, Drake sheds light on why, how, and to what effect different types of witnesses are deployed in response to mass violence – whether to prosecute war criminals, counter state narratives, or mobilize resistance to war, atrocity, and injustice.

Leyla Belle Drake is a historian of political ideas. She completed her doctoral studies in 2024 as a co-affiliate of the Dept. of the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University and the multidisciplinary research program Engaging Vulnerability. She is now Research Coordinator at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) in Uppsala.

This seminar is co-organised by Human Rights Studies and History.