Richard Schifter

Richard Schifter (July 31, 1923 – October 4, 2020) was an Austrian-American attorney and diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1985 to 1992.

Early life and education

Richard Schifter was born in Vienna, Austria, on July 31, 1923, into a Jewish family from Poland. In the wake of the Anschluss by which the First Austrian Republic was annexed by Nazi Germany, Schifter's family sought permission for all of them to emigrate to the United States, but Richard was the only member of the family able to obtain a visa. His parents, who had been born in Poland, were in the Polish quota, and placed on a long waiting list. He immigrated to the United States without his family in December 1938, at the age of 15. In the U.S., he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of the City of New York in 1943.

Schifter enrolled in Yale Law School in 1948, receiving his LL.B. in 1951.

Career After graduating from law school, Schifter joined the law firm of Riegelman, Strasser, Schwarz & Spiegelberg (now Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson). Following the death of Felix S. Cohen in 1953, Schifter, along with fellow attorney Arthur Lazarus, Jr., became the main attorneys for the Oglala Sioux Tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation in their repeated disputes with the United States government. He also served on the President's Task Force on American Indians from 1966 to 1967.

After the election of Bill Clinton, he was appointed to special assistant to the United States National Security Council. He served in this capacity until 2001.

Since leaving government in 2001, Schifter headed the American Jewish International Relations Institute and the Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeastern Europe.