2 LT Courtney Dooley, USMA ‘18

While at West Point, Courtney Dooley was a division one track athlete and gained the rank of cadet Battalion Commander for the 2^nd Battalion of the 4^th Regiment.  She first became interested in studying genocide and mass atrocity when she visited Cambodia as a cadet in 2015. After touring Tuol Sleng, a torture facility used by the Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian Genocide and the Killing Fields, where thousands of innocent Cambodians were murdered and bludgeoned to death, she became impassioned about the study of genocide.  Her senior thesis focused on the on mass rape and sexual abuse of men and women as a crime of genocide in Bosnia.  Using documents from the United Nations, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and materials from the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal provided by Judge Patricia Whalen, Courtney produced an award-winning thesis which is already being considered by the National Defense University for addition to the curricular materials they use to teach genocide to Colonels and General Officers.   One of the members of the Beitler Ethics Essay Award Committee remarked that “Maybe the best paper I’ve read not only on this subject but on any related to violence by an undergraduate student. This could be published tomorrow in a top-tier journal.”  After the Army, 2 LT Dooley hopes to pursue a career in genocide & mass atrocity prevention.