Clark Hall 203
Office: (202) 885-2215
Office Hours: 2-3:30 Wednesday, 11-1 Thursday
E-mail: mertus@american.edu


J.D. Yale Law School
B.S. Cornell University


Co-Director of the Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs Program (EPGA)
EPGA Program Rationale
EPGA Degree Requirements
Human Rights @ AU

Download Curriculum Vitae

Biography
Professor 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 worked 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 Poltical 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 multidisciplinary 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.

Recent Courses Taught

• Gender, Human Rights & Conflict
• Ethics in Service Learning
  
• Human Rights & U.S. Foreign Policy
• Human Rights & U.S. Foreign Policy (Distance Learning)
  
• Ethics in International Affairs
  
• Human Rights & the Media
  
• Peace Paradigms
  
• Human Rights
  
• Human Rights & Conflict
  

Research Interest

• Human Rights & US Foreign Policy
• Gender and Conflict
• Refugees and Humanitarian Action
• Central and Eastern Europe/The Balkans
• Human Rights and Democratization
• Ethics and Modern Global Problems
• International Organizations & Peace
• Human Rights & the Media

Publications (Selected)

BOOKS

• The United Nations and Human Rights" (Routledge, 2005)
• "Bait and Switch: Human Rights and American Foreign Policy" (Routledge, 2004)
• "Human Rights and Conflict" (United States Institute of Peace, 2004) (editor, with Jeffrey Helsing)
• "War's Offensive Against Women: The Humanitarian Challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan" (Kumarian, 2000)
• "Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War" (U. Cal. Press 1999)
• "The Suitcase: Refugees' Voices from Bosnia and" (U. Cal. Press, 1999)
• "Local Action/Global Change" (UNIFEM 1999)(with Mallika Dutt and Nancy Flowers).

ARTICLES

    Balkan States:

• Findings from Focus Group Research on Public Perceptions of the ICTY “Sudost Europa” 55 (January 2007), p107.

•  “Improving International Peacebuilding Efforts: The Example of Human Rights Culture" in Kosovo, Global Governance (Spring 2004). 

• The Learning Curve: Media Intervention in Kosovo (with Mark Thompson) in "Forging Peace: Intervention, Human Rights and the Management of Media Space" (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2002)(Monroe E. Price and Mark Thompson, eds).

• “Legitimizing the Use of Force in Kosovo,” Ethics and International Affairs (Apr 1, 2001), p35.

•  “Serbia: Reimagining Europe’s Outlaw Nation,” Columbia Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 54(2) (Spring 2001).

• National Minorities Under the Dayton Accords: Lessons from History from “Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History” (Joel M. Halparn and David A. Kidackel, eds.) State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, p234.

• “Reconsidering the Legality of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from Kosovo,” 41 (5) William & Mary Law Review 1743 (2000).

• Women in Kosovo: Contested Terrains, “Gender Politics in the Western Balkans” (Sabrina P. Ramet, ed.) Pennsylvania State University: 1999, p 171.

• The Dayton Peace Accords: Lessons from the Past and for the Future from “ Minority Rights in the ‘New’ Europe,” (Peter Cumper and Steven Wheatley, eds.) Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999, p261.

• “Prospects for National Minorities Under the Dayton Accords” Brooklyn Journal of International Law 23 (1997), p793.
  

• “Remember Kosovo” from Uncaptive Minds 8 (Fall-Winter 1995-1996), p 65. 
  

• “Nationalism and Nation-Building: Milosevic Turns to Montenegro and Kosovo,” 26 New York University Review of International Law & Policy 511 (1994).
  
  

    Civil Society:
  

• When Civil Society Promotion Fails State-Building: The Inevitable Fault-Lines in Post-Conflict Reconstructions, from “Subcontracting Peace: The Challenges of NGO Peacebuilding.” (Oliver P. Richmond and Henry F. Carey, eds.) Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2005 

• “The Liberal State vs. the National Soul: Mapping Civil Society Transplants” Social & Legal Studies: An International Journal 8 (March 1999), p121.

• “From Legal Transplants to Transformative Justice: Human Rights and the Promise of Transnational Civil Society” American University International Law Review 14
  

• “Doing Democracy ‘Differently’: The Transformative Potential of Human Rights NGOs in Transnational Civil Society.” Third World Legal Studies (1998-1999), p205.

    Human Rights and Wartime:

• "Human Rights and Civil Society in an Age of American Exceptionalism," in Richard Wilson, ed., Human Rights in the War on Terror (Cambridge University Press: London and New York, 2005).

• “The Human Rights Dimensions of the War in Iraq,” in Human Rights and Conflict (Julie Mertus and Jeffrey Helsing, eds. (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace 2003) (with Maia Carter, American University PhD student).

•   “The Impact of Conflict on Women’s Rights,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law (forthcoming, spring 2003). 
  

• “Racism in civil conflict: domestic and global dimensions,” in Transnational Legal Processes: Globalization and Power Disparities (Michael Likosky, ed., New York and London: Butterworths, 2002).
  

• “Beyond Borders,” Human Rights Review 1 (Jan- Mar 2000).

• “The State and the Post-Cold War Refugee Regime: New Models, New Questions” Michigan Journal of International Law 20 (Fall 1998), p59.

    Gender Rights/Feminism:

• “Teaching Gender in International Relations,” International Studies Perspectives 8 (Aug 2007), p323.

• Combating Trafficking: International Efforts and Their Ramifications. “Human Trafficking, Human Security and the Balkans” (H. Richard Friman and Simon Reich, eds.) University of Pennsylvania Publishers, 2007, p. 40.

• Liberal Feminism: Local Narratives in a Gender Context “Making Sense of International Relations Theory” (Jennifer Sterling-Folker, ed.) Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005, p252.

• "Improving the Status of Women in the Wake of War: Overcoming Structural Obstacles” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 41 (2003), p542.

• “Shouting from the Bottom of a Well,” International Feminist Journal of Politics,2004.
  

•  “Grounds for Cautious Optimism,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 2(1) (April 2001).
  

• “Feminist Curiosity Unravels Militarism,” Berkley Women’s Law Journal 15(2000).

• Women in Kosovo: Contested Terrains, “Gender Politics in the Western Balkans” (Sabrina P. Ramet, ed.) Pennsylvania State University: 1999, p 171.

• “Women’s Human Rights in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Women and International Human Rights, Kelly Askin and Dorean Koenig, eds. (New York: Transaction Press, 1999).

• “’Woman’ in the Service of National Identity," Hastings Women’s Law Journal 5 (Winter 1994), p5.

• “A Perspective on Women and International Human Rights after the Vienna Declaration: The Inside/Outside Construct,” 26 New York University Review of International Law & Policy 201  (1994) (with Pamela Goldberg).

•  “State Discriminatory Family Law and Customary Abuses,” in Women and Human Rights: An Agenda for Change, Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1994).

• “Beyond the Solitary Self: Voice, Community and Reproductive Freedom,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 3 (1992), p247. 
  

 
   
    Human Rights and the US:

• Human Rights Post-September 11, in “Exploring International Human Rights: Essential Readings” (Rhonda L. Callaway & Julie Harrelson-Stephens, eds.) Lynne Reinner Publishing: 2007, p287.

• “The New US Human Rights Policy: A Radical Departure” International Studies Perspective 4: 371-384 (2003).
  
  

    International Justice/War Crime Trials:

• Key Ethical Inquiries for Future Research, “Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones" (R. Charli Carpenter, ed.) Kumarian, 2007.

•  “Improving International Peacebuilding Efforts: The Example of Human Rights Culture" in Kosovo, Global Governance (Spring 2004).
  

• “The Politics of Memory and International Trials For Wartime,” in Political Transitions: Politics and Cultures, Paul Gready, ed. (New York and London, Pluto Press, 2003).
  

• “The Kitchen Cabinet,” in Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance (Gender, Culture, and Global Politics), Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga, eds. (New York: Garland, 2000)(republished in paperback by Routledge, 2001).

• “Truth in a Box: the Limits of Justice Through Judicial Mechanisms,” in The Politics of Memory: Truth, Healing and Social Justice, Abdullahi An-Na’im and Ifi Amadiume, eds. (New York:  Zed Books, 2000).

• “Faith and (In)tolerance of Minority Religions: a Comparative Analysis of Romania, Ukraine, and Poland,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 36(Winter-Spring 1999).

• “Human Rights: Group Defamation, Freedom of Expression and the Law of Nations” Houston Journal of International Law 21 (Spring 1999), p581.

• “The State and the Post-Cold War Refugee Regime: New Models, New Questions,” The International Journal of Refugee Law 10 (Oct.1998), p 321.

• “The War Crimes Tribunal: Triumph of the International Community, Pain of the Survivors,” 8(1) Mind and Human Interaction 47 (winter/spring 1997).

• “Proceedings from the 92nd Annual Meeting: The Challenge of Non-State Actors”
  

  Book Review:

• "Peace at any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo," (book review, 2008), Peace and Change.

• “Slobodan Milosevic: Myth and Responsibility,” Open Democracy (March 17, 2006).

• “The Myth of Greater Albania,” (book review), Slavic Studies (completed and in press for 2004).

• “Saving Strangers,” (book review), American Journal of International Law (January 2003).

• “Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia,” Political Science Quarterly 118(2): 336 (Summer 2003).

• “Recent Books on International Law: Peace Agreements and Human Rights” The American Journal of International Law 96 (January 2002), p282.
  

• “Ger Duijzings, ‘Religion, Politics and Identity in Kosovo,’” (Book Review), 60(3) Slavic Review (Fall 2001).

• ”Degraded Capacity:  The Media and the Kosovo Crisis,” (book review), Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol. 3, n. 2 (2001). 
  

• “Feminist Curiosity Unravels Militarism: Why Method Matters,” (Book Review), 15 Berkeley Women’ Law Journal 338 (2000).

• “The Liberal State vs. the National Soul: Mapping Civil Society Transplants” Social & Legal Studies: An International Journal 8 (March 1999), p121.

•  “War Crimes Against Women,” (Book Review), 93 American Journal of International Law 740 (1999).

• “From Legal Transplants to Transformative Justice: Human Rights and the Promise of Transnational Civil Society” American University International Law Review 14   
  

Professional Practice (Selected)

• Chemonics International 2004-present, Human rights education consultant; Conducted workshops and trainings and authored educational materials.
• U.S. State Department/ Drexel University 8/03-6/04,  Consultant, Conducted audit of political science project in Albania.
• OXFAM USA 6/00-8/00, Kosovo Specialist; reviewed and assessed potential and ongoing OXFAM operations in Kosovo.
• Human Rights Institute, UN World Conference on Women, Beijing, China 8/95, Leader in ten day international workshop and training on women’s human rights law.
• Newport Institute and Harvard Center for Policy Negotiation, Cambridge, MA 8/94, Conducted field research in  Hungary and authored study on Roma youth (with Scott Long).
• Human Rights Watch, Helsinki Watch, New York, NY 6/93 - 7/94, Counsel Documented and analyzed war crimes and other human rights abuses in the former Yugoslavia; drafted evidentiary and procedural rules for proposed international war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia; authored reports on human rights abuses in ex-Yugoslavia; acted as Counsel for Human Rights Watch amicus
• The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy , New York, NY 9/92 - 5/93, Conducted fact-finding mission to Croatia to review adoption, abortion and citizenship laws; co-authored Meeting the Health Care Needs of Women Survivors of the Balkan Conflict; amicus brief before Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court. brief for Karadzic case; extensive public speaking.

BAR ADMISSIONS

• U.S. Supreme Court (1993)
• Washington D.C. (1989)
• New York (1989)
• New Jersey (1988)

Awards (Selected)

• American Political Science Association, 2005
• Human Rights Book of the Year - Bait and Switch U.S. Institute of Peace, 2000-2001
• Senior Fellow, Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace. 
• The Council on Foreign Relations, 1998 - present Term Member
• The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 1994 - 1995 Research and Writing Grant.
• Harvard Law School Human Rights Program,  Human Rights Fellow 1996-1997
  
• The Ford Foundation, Grant support for human rights education projects. 1996-1997
  
• The Soros Foundation, Grant for study of ethno-national conflict and human rights law in Serbia. 1994-1995