Join Princeton professor Gary Bass, eminent historian Margaret MacMillan and Pilar Elizalde as they discuss Bass's magisterial history of the Japanese war crimes tribunal, the forgotten twin to Germany's Nuremberg trials.

Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on trial and the Making of Modern Asia was named one of last year's 10 best books by The Washington Post, one of the 12 essential nonfiction books by The New Yorker, 100 notable books by The New York Times, and 10 essential books by The Telegraph; a New York Times Book Review editors’ choice; a best book of the year by The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and Air Mail; and the book of the week in The Observer and The Sunday Times.

This event is co-hosted with All Souls College. Please note this event takes place in person only.

Speaker biographies

Gary Bass, William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War at Princeton University, is the author of Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia (Knopf); The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (Knopf); Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf); and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton University Press). He won the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton’s highest recognition for teaching, as well as the Stanley Kelley Teaching Prize in the Politics Department. AB Harvard College, PhD Harvard University.

Margaret MacMillan is emeritus professor of History at the University of Toronto and an emeritus professor of International History at Oxford University. She was Provost of Trinity College, Toronto from 2002-7 and Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford from 2007-2017. She is a trustee of Imperial War Museum and sits on a number of non-profit advisory boards. Her research specialises in British imperial history and the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Her publications have been translated into 26 languages and include Paris, 1919, Nixon and Mao and The War that Ended Peace. Her latest book is War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020). She gave the CBC’s Massey lectures in 2015 and the BBC’s Reith Lectures in 2018.

Pilar Elizalde is Departmental Lecturer in Law and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Associate Member at St Antony’s College. Her research centres on the promotion, contestation, and politicisation of human rights norms, particularly in the context of international organisations. Her research interests also include gender equality, civil society mobilisation, human rights indicators, data visualisation, and the use of multi-methods.