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
• Jennifer Rasmussen, Asia Division Director,
  American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative
• 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 researcher at Human Rights Watch as well as a lecturer and clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program. She has done extensive field research, report writing, human rights legal work, and advocacy. Areas of expertise include the conduct of war, cluster munitions, freedom of expression, and human rights and the environment.

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.

Jennifer Rasmussen joined the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative as Director of the Asia Division in March 2008 following her tenure as Director of Program Design for Global Rights, a Washington DC-based human rights NGO, where she has worked since 1996. As the creator and director of Global Rights' Access to Justice Initiative, she worked to develop human rights programs involving public interest litigation, legal reform and advocacy in various regions of the world. In Asia, she has worked on programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia, India, Mongolia, Nepal and Timor-Leste. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from American University's Washington College of Law, specializing in international law.

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.