Rachel Hochhauser, who works for the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s White Collar Crime Division, is emblematic of our unofficial school mantra: \u201cFrom the classroom to the world.\u201d After three years of serving abroad prosecuting war criminals from the Yugoslavian War of the 1990s at the International Court at The Hague in The Netherlands, Ms. Hochhuaser returned to New York City to resume her work with the Manhattan D.A. Her life is a fascinating mixture of public service in the field of law and order.<\/p>\n
At Fieldston, Mr. Montera recalls, \u201cRachel was a remarkable history and literature student. She was quite precocious. She was that rare 8th grader who could explain T.S. Eliot\u2019s \u201cPrufrock\u201d poem. By her senior year she had an impressive command of national and<\/p>\n
international politics.She was a natural teacher and very community minded.\u201d Graduating from Fieldston in 1991 under the guidance of Dean Arthur Whitman, Hochhauser continued her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1995. Hochhauser took a year off to travel Vietnam and then returned to New York City for law school.<\/p>\n
Hochhauser, whose voice is filled with energy, had always taken an interest in international law. \u201cWith the importance of social justice that Fieldston ingrains in you,\u201d Hochhauser knew she wanted to pursue a career that, \u201chad nothing to do with sitting behind a desk,\u201d and definitely included \u201cpursuing justice for victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
She applied to the Manhattan DA\u2019s office in 1999 and received an offer. After just a short period of time she realized that, \u201cIt hit all the right bells.\u201d It was especially enjoyable because it was demonstrative of, \u201call the good things you learn at Fieldston, particularly to stick up for the little guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
After spending three years working on violent crime cases she moved to the Sex Crimes Unit and worked there for another three years. In 2005 she joined the Child Abuse Bureau working to prosecute sex offenders, child murderers, and sexual assailants. Then, in 2010, she went back to violent crime and started to mentor new lawyers coming into the DA\u2019s office.\u00a0 In 2011, she applied to an international criminal tribunal to prosecute war criminals from the wars that grew out of the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Following the collapse of Cold War communism in Eastern European states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and The Soviet Union itself, other authoritarian communist regimes, in places like The Balkans, also imploded. In Yugoslavia it led to a scramble for nationalist leadership and hideous explosion of<\/p>\n
violent ethnocentrism. The ambitions of Serbian nationalists conflicted with the ambitions and desires of Croatians, Bosnians and Montenegrins. It was here that Ms. Hochhauser\u2019s sense of history and research skills came in handy. Hochhauser was part of a team responsible for the prosecution of a Bosnian Serb general who was one of the top two people responsible for acts of genocide that occurred during that time.<\/p>\n
One of the most interesting ironies about her time on the tribunal is that she used a documentary\u201dThe Fall of Yugoslavia\u201d that was directed and produced by another Fieldston alum, Laura Silber, as evidence to help put him away. \u201cI also found out that Laura Silber is the daughter of Barbara Silber, who was the chair of the Science Department at Fieldston during my years at the school.\u201d<\/p>\n
After three years at the Hague, Rachel returned to the DA\u2019s office in 2014 and started to focus on economic crimes in the wake of the Wall Street scandals following the 2009 economic crisis. \u201cWorking at the Hague was an incredibly eye opening and interesting experience. I got to work with lawyers from all over the world; I experienced the world as melting pot. When I returned to New York I began working on white collar crimes a big and important job here in the Economic Capital of the World.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was also a homecoming for her: Hochhauser felt that at the DA\u2019s office she was more connected to her cases because they were happening right there in her city. Hochhauser is proud of the justice system while simultaneously recognizing that, \u201c that all criminal justice systems and all prosecutors should strive for improvement and that there is always room to improve\u201dand of her department for, \u201cgiving a voice to someone who doesn\u2019t have one.\u201d She said it was especially gratifying working on child abuse cases because it was, \u201call encompassing and you really feel like you are helping someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hochhauser concluded by saying that, \u201cThe education I got Fieldston is the best I\u2019ve ever gotten in my life and I would not have done this kind of public sector work if it weren\u2019t for Fieldston. It is truly a special educational environment.\u201d In a second phone interview Ms. Hochhauser elaborated on this by saying that \u201cFieldston facilitated analytical thinking on how exactly to do the right thing, even outside of ethics classes. That was something wonderfully unique about Fieldston.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rachel Hochhauser, who works for the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s White Collar Crime Division, is emblematic of our unofficial school mantra: \u201cFrom the classroom to the world.\u201d After three years of serving abroad prosecuting war criminals from the Yugoslavian War of the 1990s at the International Court at The Hague in The Netherlands, Ms. Hochhuaser returned to New York City to resume her work with the Manhattan D.A. Her life is a fascinating mixture of public<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[255],"class_list":["post-3397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3398,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions\/3398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}