Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has appointed Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro as one of seven members of the Brazilian Truth Commission. Pinheiro has served as a Cogut Visiting Professor at Brown University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The Truth Commission has a two-year mandate to investigate human rights violations committed by the civilian-military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. Pinheiro’s long history working against violence and on behalf of human rights in Brazil and internationally made him a likely choice for Rousseff, who was herself arrested and tortured in 1970 for her opposition to the authoritarian regime. Pinheiro served as special secretary for human rights under former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who has been a Brown University Professor-at-Large, and headed the 2012 commission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council to investigate human rights violations in Syria.