Wicked Problems
The Ethics of Action for Peace, Rights, and Justice
Edited by Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, and Ernesto Verdeja
Author Information
Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick is University Professor at the University of San Diego's Kroc School of Peace Studies. Austin's teaching, scholarship, and public engagement lies at the intersection of social movements, human rights, and new technology. He is the author of What Slaveholders Think and The Good Drone, and has written articles in Slate, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The Conversation, MIT Reader, Medium, and Aeon. His commentary on current events includes appearances on BBC and Fox News, and his work on drones has been profiled in Science and Fast Company and by NBC, among others.
Douglas Irvin-Erickson is Assistant Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University. He is the author of Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide, and many articles on human rights, international criminal law and legal history, genocide, and peace. Irvin-Erickson directs the Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program at the Carter School, is a Senior Fellow with the Alliance for Peacebuilding, a Board Member of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, and a member of the editorial board of Genocide Studies and Prevention. He lectures widely and works with governments, international organizations, and NGOs around the world.
Ernesto Verdeja is Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. He researches contemporary genocide and mass atrocities, and political justice and reconciliation after violence. He has worked for a variety of human rights organizations and is the Executive Director of the non-profit Institute for the Study of Genocide. Ernesto regularly consults with governments and non-governmental organizations on mass atrocity prevention and reconciliation efforts.
Contributors:
Donald Anthonyson is the director of Families for Freedom, where he was previously a lead organizer and board member and has led the efforts of the International Deportee Justice Campaign. Donald migrated to the United States in 1979 from Antigua and has been involved in various social issues, including police brutality (Elenanor Bumphus Justice Committee) and antiracial responses (NYASA) to immigration.
Jessica Baumgardner-Zuzik is the senior director for learning and evaluation at the Alliance for Peacebuilding. She has expertise in peacebuilding and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), with more than twelve years of experience in leadership positions in multilateral institutions and NGOs developing and implementing monitoring and evaluation approaches in conflict- affected and fragile states. She oversees AfP's learning and education portfolio, where she conducts research and works to improve capacity and understanding of MEL techniques.
Ashley J. Bohrer is a scholar- activist based in Chicago. She holds a PhD in philosophy and is currently assistant professor of gender and peace studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class, and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism (2020).
Travis Akil Brookes works with Rethink Masculinity, a D.C.- based collaborative effort to address gendered violence by engaging masculine- identifying people in work to promote healthy masculinities.
Minh Dang is executive director and cofounder of Survivor Alliance, an international nonprofit focused on leadership development for survivors of slavery and human trafficking (www.survivoralliance.org). She is also a research fellow at the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab, studying mental health and well- being of survivors of slavery.
Philip Gamaghelyan is an assistant professor at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. He is also a conflict resolution scholar-practitioner, cofounder and board member of the Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation, and the managing editor of the Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation. He works in the post- Soviet states, as well as Turkey, Syria, and other conflict regions, engaging policymakers, journalists, educators, social scientists, and other discourse- creating professionals. His research is focused on politics of memory in conflict contexts as well as on critical reevaluation and design of conflict resolution interventions.
Tony Gaskew is a professor of criminal justice and a faculty affiliate in Africana studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Bradford. As a critical race theorist, his research is immersed in dismantling criminal justice systems of oppression. His books include Rethinking Prison Reentry: Transforming Humiliation into Humility (2014) and Stop Trying to Fix Policing: Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of Black Liberation (2021).
Beatrix Geaghan-Breiner is a third-year undergraduate at Columbia University studying the history of twentieth- century U.S. foreign policy. She is a Laidlaw Research Fellow interested in international politics and peace and has published on U.S. sanctions on Iran in the Columbia Undergrad Law Review.
alicia sanchez gill is a queer, afrolatinx survivor who has called D.C. home for almost twenty years. Her work centers on creating survivor safety without prisons. She has fifteen years of experience in cross-movement organizing firmly grounded in Black, queer feminist theory and lived experience. She is the executive director of Emergent Fund, a national, rapid-response, social justice fund created with the explicit goal of supporting Black, Indigenous, and people of color organizers responding to the biggest crises of our time.
Felicity Gray is a PhD scholar at the Australian National University and a practitioner in protection of civilians and conflict response. Her research examines unarmed and nonviolent strategies for the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Her research spans Lebanon, Berlin, New York City, Myanmar, and South Sudan. She has worked as a practitioner of nonviolent protection action in South Sudan.
Susan F. Hirsch is the Vernon and Minnie Lynch Chair and Professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. She is the author of In the Moment of Greatest Calamity: Terrorism, Grief, and a Victim's Quest for Justice (2009) and Mountaintop Mining in Appalachia: Understanding Stakeholders and Change in Environmental Conflict (2014) and, with Agnieszka Paczynska, the editor of Conflict Zone, Comfort Zone: Ethics, Pedagogy, and Effecting Change in Field- Based Courses (2019).
Elizabeth Hume is the vice president of the Alliance of Peacebuilding. She is a conflict prevention and peacebuilding expert with more than twenty years of experience in senior leadership positions in bilateral and multilateral institutions and NGOs developing and implementing conflict prevention and peacebuilding programs in conflict- affected and fragile states. She oversees AfP's Policy and Advocacy program, where she co- leads the Global Fragility Act Coalition and leads other policy legislation reforms in the peacebuilding and conflict prevention sector.
Deena R. Hurwitz is a Schell Center Senior Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School and a human rights consultant. She taught international human rights law clinics and seminars for close to two decades and is the founding director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was also a professor of law from 2003 until 2015. She has worked in and written on the Middle East and North Africa for many years. Her publications include International Human Rights Advocacy Law Stories (coedited with Margaret Satterthwaite and Douglas Ford, 2009).
Latishia James-Portis is a movement chaplain and trauma- informed facilitator. She works at the intersection of faith, sexuality, and reproductive and healing justice.
George A. Lopez is the Hesburgh Professor of Peace Studies, Emeritus, at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. He has written fifty articles and book chapters and six books on sanctions. From October 2010 through July 2011, he served on the United Nations Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing UN sanctions on North Korea.
Tim Murithi is head of program at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation based in Cape Town and extraordinary professor of African studies at the Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa. He has over twenty- three years of experience in the fields of peace, security, international justice, governance, and development.
Daniel J. Myers is president of Misericordia University. He previously served as provost at American University in Washington, D.C., and Marquette University and as professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame.
Laurie Nathan is professor of the practice of mediation and director of the Mediation Program at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. His most recent journal articles have appeared in Global Governance, Global Policy, Swiss Political Science Review, and Third World Quarterly.
Reina C. Neufeldt is associate professor of peace and conflict studies at Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. She works on applied peacebuilding ethics, reflective practice, and program monitoring and learning with NGOs. Her publications include Ethics for Peacebuilders: A Practical Guide (2016).
Nicole Newman is an organizer in Washington, D.C. She earned her MS in organizational development at American University and is the cofounder of Two Brown Girls Consulting Cooperative.
Agnieszka Paczynska is associate professor at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University. She is the editor, with Susan F. Hirsch, of Conflict Zone, Comfort Zone: Ethics, Pedagogy, and Effecting Change in Field- Based Courses (2019) and the author of The New Politics of Aid: Emerging Donors and Conflict- Affected States (2019).
Darakshan Raja is the codirector of the Justice for Muslims Collective, a community-based organization that works to dismantle structural Islamophobia through community organizing and empowerment, raising political consciousness, shifting narratives, and building strategic alliances across movements.
Janis Rosheuvel is a program director at Solidaire, a major donor network moving money to progressive social movements. She also does antiracism training with the Flatbush Tenant Coalition. She earned her MA in conflict resolution from the University of Bradford, lectured at John Jay College, and served as a Fulbright fellow in South Africa.
Kirssa Cline Ryckman is an associate professor at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the outcomes of both nonviolent collective campaigns and violent movements, as well as the use of violence against civilians in the form of terrorism and within the context of civil war.
Noam Sandweiss-Back is the director of partnerships with the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and the program manager with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary.
Zuri C. Tau is a founder of LiberatoryResearch.com and a principal at Social Insights Research, LLC. She is currently earning her PhD in sociology from Georgia State University. She writes about and studies oppositional consciousness, women of color leadership, and social movements and is the managing editor of the academic journal City and Community.
Liz Theoharis is the co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and the director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. She is the author of Always with Us? What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (2017) and co- author of Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing (2018).
