Biography
He was born in Havana as Alfredo (de) Zayas y Rozos (usually known as Alfredo (de) Zayas under Spanish naming customs), the son of the Cuban lawyer José-Maria-Enrique-Victor Zayas y Portela and Agustina Rozos y Arnaldo, a native of Asturias in Spain. He is a relative and namesake of Cuba's 4th President Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso. The family moved to the United States following the Cuban Revolution, and he anglicized his first name to Alfred. Alfred de Zayas grew up in Chicago and earned his juris doctor from Harvard Law School and a doctorate of philosophy in modern history from the Georg-August University of Göttingen. He practiced corporate law in New York and family law in Florida, as member of the New York and Florida Bars. He was also a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Tübingen and research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. In 1978-80, he participated in the German-American Schoolbook Commission at the Georg Eckert Institut in Braunschweig and in 1980 published a long article on the subject of prejudice and stereotypes in schoolbooks in "Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte".
During the course of his legal and academic career, he has been a visiting professor of international law and of world history at a number of institutions, including the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva), the DePaul University College of Law (Chicago), the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations, the Schiller International University (Leysin), the Académie Internationale de Droit Constitutionnel (Tunis), the University of Trier, the Santa Clara Law School, the Center for Applied Studies in International Negotiations (CASIN, Genève), the Institut de Droits de l'Homme Strasbourg, the Felix Ermacora Institute in Vienna, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Lund (Sweden), the Irish National University (Galway) and the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Madrid). He has been member of doctoral commissions at Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, the universities of Amsterdam, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the International Humanitarian Law Institute (San Remo) and the Geneva School of Diplomacy.
De Zayas regularly publishes op-ed articles and essays in German and Swiss newspapers, including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, Das Parlament, Der Spiegel, Bayernkurier, Zeit Fragen, Le Temps and the Tribune de Genève. He has made television appearances on round tables and panels for CNN, Russia Today, WDR, WDR's Monitor, WDR's "Alte und neue Heimat", Phoenix, 3sat, ZDF, ZDF-Magazin, Südwestfunk/Baden-Baden, "Report", Aschaffenburger Gespräche, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Léman Bleu (Geneva) etc. He has been legal and historical consultant to numerous television documentaries in the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Germany, including the Discovery Channel film on the sinking of the refugee ship "Wilhelm Gustloff", and the Bayerischer Rundfunk documentary "Flucht und Vertreibung". He regularly gives radio interviews to Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Welle, Radio Cité (Geneva), WBAI (New York), and other stations.
De Zayas is a Roman Catholic and resides with his Dutch wife in Geneva.
According to press articles, he has been a registered Republican in the United States since 1968, when he was a Harvard student and active member of the Harvard Republicans, but has voted for the Democratic party since 2004.
Read more about this topic: Alfred-Maurice De Zayas
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