Faculty Bios

• Julie Mertus, Associate Professor, American University
• Bonnie Docherty, Researcher, Human Rights Watch
  & Lecturer and Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School
• Joseph Eldridge, University Chaplain, American University
• Robert Tomasko, Writer & Busines Consultant
• Rebecca Richman Cohen, Professional Filmmaker
• Gabriel London, Professional Filmmaker
• Andrea Ritchie, Director, Sex Workers Project, Urban Justice Center
• Katherine Guernsey, Adjunct Professor, American University
• Janet E. Lord, Founding Partner, BlueLaw International, LLP

Julie Mertus is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the MA program in Ethics, Peace and Global Affairs at American University. During academic year 2006-2007, she was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Denmark where she is working with the Danish Institute of Human Rights. A graduate of Yale Law School, her work focuses on human rights, U.S. foreign policy, refugee and humanitarian law and policy, gender and conflict and post-war transitions. Her geographic expertise is in Central and Eastern Europe, with a specialty on the former Yugoslavia, but she has also participated in human rights projects in such diverse places as Vietnam, Brazil, China, Jordan and South Africa. Her prior appointments include: Senior Fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace; Human Rights Fellow, Harvard Law School; Writing Fellow, MacArthur Foundation, Fulbright Fellow (Romania), and Counsel, Human Rights Watch.

As a scholar, Professor Mertus has published widely. Her book Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (Routledge, 2004) was named "human rights book of the year" by the American Political Science Association Human Rights Section. Her other books include: Human Rights and Conflict (United States Institute of Peace, 2006)(editor, with Jeffrey Helsing); The United Nations and Human Rights (Routledge, 2005); Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War (U. Cal. Press 1999), War's Offensive Against Women: The Humanitarian Challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan (Kumarian, 2000); The Suitcase: Refugees' Voices from Bosnia and Croatia (U. Cal. Press, 1999); and Local Action/Global Change (UNIFEM 1999)(with Mallika Dutt and Nancy Flowers). Her work has also appeared in leading multi-disciplinary journals such as: Ethics and International Affairs, Global Governance, International Studies Perspectives, International Feminist Journal of Politics and The Harvard International Review.

As a practitioner, Professor Mertus has nearly twenty years experience in the human rights field, as a field researcher, lawyer, advocate, political analyst and trainer. At the international level, she has conducted human rights trainings with NGOs, political leaders, school teachers and student activists in over a dozen countries. She has also served as a consultant on human rights and humanitarian issues to UNHCR, the Humanitarianism and War Project, the Watson Institute for International Affairs, Women Waging Peace, OXFAM, the Soros Foundation, and many other nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations. She has also appeared as an expert witness in asylum proceedings and has offered expert commentary on CNN, NPR, and Voice of America, and in such newspapers as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and The International Herald Tribune.

As a teacher, Professor Mertus has been recognized for her innovative course designs and interactive teaching. Among several colleagues, she has been a pioneer in distance learning teaching, offering at least one distance learning course each spring for the past three years. She has written curriculum for several human rights courses and her own book on teaching women's human rights has been translated and used in Albanian, Arabic, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Thai and Ukrainian. In 2003, she received the School of International Service, American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Curriculum Development, and in 2002 and 2006, the School of International Service, American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Professional Service. In 2005, Professor Mertus won the School of International Service award for Scholar/Teacher of the Year.

Read more about Julie Mertus' publications and work.

Bonnie Docherty is a lecturer on law and clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic in Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program and a researcher in the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW). Docherty is an expert on international humanitarian law, particularly involving cluster munitions and civilian protection during war. She investigated cluster munition use and/or the conduct of war in Georgia (2008), Lebanon and Israel (2006), Gaza (2006), Iraq (2003), and Afghanistan (2002). She produced an HRW report from each of these field missions. She also actively participated in negotiations for the new Convention on Cluster Munitions, lobbying states and providing legal advice at conferences in Lima, Vienna, Wellington, Dublin, and Oslo from 2007-2008. At the Harvard Clinic, her areas of focus include international humanitarian law, human rights and the environment, and freedom of expression. For 2008-2009, she is also a National Security Fellow at HarvardÕs Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. She received her A.B. from Harvard University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before law school, she worked as a journalist for three years.

In addition to her HRW work, her publications include "'More Sweat...Less Blood': U.S. Military Training and Minimizing Civilian Casualties," Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (2007); "The Time is Now: A Historical Argument for a Cluster Munitions Convention," 20 Harvard Human Rights Journal 53 (2007); "Challenging Boundaries: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and International Environmental Law Protection," 10 NYU Environmental Law Journal 70 (2001); "Defamation Law: Positive Jurisprudence," 13 Harvard Human Rights Journal 263 (2000); "MaineÕs North Woods: Environmental Justice and the National Park Proposal," 24 Harvard Environmental Law Review 547 (2000).

Joseph Eldridge is the University Chaplain of American University and responsible for managing the programs of the Kay Spiritual Life Center. For over 25 years he has been involved with Latin American human rights and development issues. He founded an NGO, the Washington Office on Latin America, and established the Washington operation of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First). He was recently received the Louis B. Sohn award from the United Nations Association for his contributions to advancing human rights. He has a doctor of divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary.

Robert Tomasko has had a career that has straddled the worlds of activism and business. He is author of four management books and has worked as a consultant on issues of organization and strategy to companies including Coca-Cola, Exxon, Infosys, Marriott, Mitsubishi, Petroleum Authority of Thailand, and Toyota. He has been an advisor to UNICEF and the Auditor General of Canada. For seven years he evaluated the performance of the American companies who were signatories of the Sullivan Principles on how well they violated the apartheid laws of South Africa. He studied organization at Harvard Business School and with Saul Alinsky. He has a masters degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education where he specialized in organizational learning.

Rebecca Richman Cohen is an alumna of Brown University and Harvard Law School. As a law student, she worked as a criminal defense investigator for indigent clients in the South Bronx and on a defense team for an accused war criminal at the United Nations-created Special Court for Sierra Leone. In the spring of 2006, Rebecca founded Racing Horse Productions, an independent film production company dedicated to human rights documentary films. She is currently producing and directing WAR DON DON, a feature-length documentary on an ongoing war crimes trial in Sierra Leone - and producing The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest, a documentary mini-series about a mentally ill prisoner in Florida with a penchant for dramatic jailbreaks. She is adjunct faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she teaches an undergraduate seminar entitled "Human Rights, Mass Atrocity, and Documentary Film."

Gabriel London began his work on criminal justice issues as an undergraduate at Pomona College, where he won the Albert R. Broccoli student film award for his first documentary, Turned Out. After making two award-winning films that accompanied the 2001 Human Right Watch report, No Escape: Prison Rape in America, Gabriel started the documentary film production company Found Object Films. As a producer and director, he has made films exploring issues ranging from the death penalty to climate change, bringing often-overlooked stories to a national audience. In 2003, he won a Soros Criminal Justice Award and his work has been shown as part of international rights campaigns, on broadcasters such as MTV and Spike TV, and in festivals such as IDFA, Urbanworld Film Festival and Live Earth. ÊHe is currently directing The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest.

Andrea Ritchie recently joined the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City as its new Director. She comes to this position as a civil rights attorney who has engaged in extensive research, writing, speaking and advocacy on physical and sexual violence by law enforcement agents against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the US and Canada. She served as a research consultant and co-author for Amnesty International's 2005 report Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against LGBT People in the US, as well as for Caught in the Net, a report on women and the "war on drugs" published by the ACLU, the Brennan Center for Justice, and Break the Chains, and Education Not Deportation: Impacts of New York City School Safety Policies on Immigrant Youth, published by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM). Ms. Ritchie was also a primary author of In the Shadows of the War on Terror: Persistent Police Brutality and Abuse in the United States, a "shadow report" submitted on behalf of over 100 national and local organizations and individuals to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She has testified before all three Committees, as well as before the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking. Ms. Ritchie also coordinated the participation of over 200 NGOs in the 2008 review of the U.S. government's compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. She has presented her research on physical and sexual abuse of women and LGBT people by law enforcement agents to the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, the American Criminology Society and the Society for the Study of Social Problems, and recently published an article entitled Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color in The Color of Violence, an anthology published by South End Press. Ms. Ritchie is a proud graduate of the Howard University School of Law and served as law clerk to the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She is currently a member of the National Collective of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and a partner in RFR, a research collaborative that supports integration of participatory research into community based organizing.

Katherine Guernsey is an attorney whose practice focuses on international law, human rights, disability, and development. She is also an adjunct professor at the American University School of International Service, where she teaches a class on human rights. Prior to holding these positions she worked as Advocacy Program Officer and Legal Counsel for Landmine Survivors Network. An international lawyer, Ms. Guernsey was extensively involved in the UN negotiations to draft a new core international human rights convention for persons with disabilities, providing counsel to both governmental and non-governmental delegations, and providing human rights education materials and workshops to both governmental and non-governmental participants. She has co-authored numerous publications associated with the treaty negotiations process and is also co-author of the World Bank publications "Making Inclusion Operational: Legal and Institutional Resources for World Bank Staff on the Inclusion of Disability Issues in Investment Projects" and "Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Its Implementation & Relevance for the World Bank."

Janet E. Lord is a founding partner of BlueLaw International, LLP, a service-disabled, veteran-owned international law and international development firm based in Washington, DC where she directs and implements human rights, disability & international development programming. An international lawyer by training, she holds law degrees from the University of Edinburgh (LLB; LLM) and the George Washington University Law School (LLM). Janet participated in all of the negotiating sessions for the UN Disability Convention, serving as legal advisor to Disabled Peoples‘ International and providing counsel to lead governments, including Mexico and Costa Rica. She is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Maryland School of Law where she teaches health and human rights law. She has taught part-time at American University, School of International Service since 1996. She has published both scholarly and practitioner-oriented works on the human rights disability and, most recently, she co-authored Human Rights YES!, a participatory human rights education manual on the rights of persons with disabilities.