Events

Join us Tuesday, August 3rd for the event "Update: Nicaragua & Cuba - Reports on Current Developments." 

Dr. Mark Ungar is a Professor of political science at Brooklyn College and of the Criminal Justice Doctoral Program and the Liberal Arts Master’s Program of the CUNY Graduate Center. He has just returned from Nicaragua where he has been working on plans for police and military reform. His research interests include Latin America, security and judicial reform, violence, human rights, international and comparative criminology. His publications include five books and over 40 articles on police reform, citizen security, human rights, and violence. He serves as an advisor on citizen security with the United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, governments, and NGOs in Latin America and is a commissioner at the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE). Current initiatives include helping draft arms control regulations with the Congress of Honduras; crafting post-transition police reform with political oppositions in Venezuela and Nicaragua; and helping expand environmental policing in the Amazon Basin. He has received grants and fellowships from the Ford, Tinker, Henkel, and Tow Foundations; the Woodrow Wilson International Center, and the National Democratic Institute’s Latin American Political Leadership program. His publications include The 21 st Century Fight for the Amazon: Environmental Enforcement in the World’s Biggest Rainforest; Sustaining Human Rights in the Twenty-First Century: Strategies from Latin America (with Katherine Hite); Policing Democracy: Overcoming Obstacles to Citizen Security in Latin America. He received his doctorate from Columbia University.

Dr. Jo-Marie Burt is an associate professor of political science and Latin American Studies at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. At Mason, she has served as Director of Latin American Studies, Co-Director of the Center for Global Studies, and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. She is an affiliate faculty in Global Affairs, Latin American Studies, Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and Women and Gender Studies. Dr. Burt is also a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a leading human rights research and advocacy organization. Dr. Burt has published widely on political violence, state-society relations, human rights and transitional justice in Latin America. Her early research focused on state and insurgent violence in Peru, and civil society responses to violence and violent actors.  This was the subject of her 2007 book, Silencing Civil Society: Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru (Palgrave), which received an Honorable Mention for the WOLA-Duke Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America, and which was published in Spanish as Violencia y Autoritarismo en el Perú: Bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2009; 2nd expanded edition, 2011). She is also co-editor of Politics in the Andes: Identity, Conflict, Reform (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).

Dr. Margaret E. Crahan, is a Senior Research Scholar and Director of the Cuba Program at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University. From 1982-1994 she was the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Power and Political Process at Occidental College and from 1994-2008 the Dorothy Epstein Professor at the City University of New York. From 2007-09 she was the Kozmetsky Distinguished Professor and Director of the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance at St. Edward’s University. She has served on the Executive Committee of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights and as a member of the Boards of St. Edward’s University and the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, as well as the Latin American Studies Association and the Washington Office on Latin America. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2013 she was recognized by the government of Brazil for her work on human rights. Dr. Crahan has published over one hundred articles and books including Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas; Religion, Culture and Society: The Case of Cuba; The City and the World: New York’s Global Future; The Wars on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and US Foreign Policy (with Thomas G. Weiss and John Goering), and Cuba-US Relations: Normalization and Its Challenges; & Donald J. Trump y las relaciones Cuba-Estados Unidos en la encrucijada (latter two with Soraya Castro Marino). Dr. Crahan received her doctorate from Columbia University.

Dr. Philip Brenner is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at American University. He has published widely on U.S./Cuba relations, U.S./Latin American relations, contemporary U.S. foreign policy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. His most recent book is Cuba at the Crossroads (2020), co-authored with John Kirk and William LeoGrande. He is also the co-author (with Peter Eisner) of Cuba Libre: A 500- Year Quest for Independence (2018). Dr. Brenner was a senior professor in the U.S. Foreign Policy program specializing in U.S.-Cuban relations and Latin America at American University. A former chair of American University's Council on Latin America, he also has served as director of the U.S. Foreign Policy program, senior. associate dean for academic affairs, and chair of the Department of International Politics and Foreign Policy. A specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, he has been engaged since 1974 in research and writing about Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations. His publications also include A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution Under Raul Castro (2014), A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution (2007). His 2002 study, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis, with James G. Blight, explores the Cuban missile crisis from the Cuban perspective and exposes a secret speech Castro delivered to the Cuban leadership in 1968. Brenner is also the author of From Confrontation to Negotiation: U.S. Relations with Cuba (1988). Since 1985, Dr. Brenner has served on the advisory board of the National Security Archive and has been involved in the archive's efforts to declassify and disseminate documents about U.S. foreign policy, including those related to the Cuban missile crisis. He also is a member of the advisory boards of the National Security Archive and Center for Democracy in the Americas and the editorial board of the journal Pensamiento Propio. He. received his Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and his doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University.