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ABOUT THE TOPIC - Human Rights and International Law
● As democracy and human rights retreat globally—and the U.S. pulls back—how can civil society and legal norms remain effective in a divided world?
● What is the role and force of international law in this era of impunity?
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER - George A. Lopez, Notre Dame
George A. Lopez is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, at the University of Notre Dame where he was a founding faculty member. He is a leading expert on economic sanctions, peacebuilding, and various peace-related issues. As a logical extension of his teaching and research with the Kroc Institute, Lopez has engaged in a diverse set of policy and public roles.
He served as interim executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1997 and chaired its Board of Directors (1998-2003), presiding over changing the hands of the Doomsday Clock in 2002. As a senior research associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs in New York City from 2001-2002, he assisted with the Council’s post-9/11 public programming throughout the U.S. From 2013-15, he was the Vice President of the Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, D.C.
Since 1992, Lopez has advised the United Nations, various international agencies, and governments on economic sanctions issues, ranging from the design of targeted financial sanctions to redressing their negative humanitarian impacts. He has written more than 40 articles and book chapters and authored or edited six books (often with Kroc Institute faculty member David Cortright) on sanctions. Lopez and Cortright’s research detailing the unlikely presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was published before the 2003 Iraq War as "Disarming Iraq" in Arms Control Today and after the war as "Containing Iraq: The Sanctions Worked" in Foreign Affairs. In 2010-11 and again in 2022-23 Lopez served on the UN Panel of Experts (1874) for monitoring sanctions on North Korea. In 2022 he co-founded https://ahsrproject.org to address the negative impact of economic sanctions on innocent populations.
Lopez has a deep commitment to nurturing the development of high-quality peace studies and peacebuilding education at the collegiate level. He was founding director of the Kroc Institute’s Summer Institute on Teaching Peace in the 21st Century (2007-21). That program assisted the development of peace research and studies programs in more than 100 higher education institutions across five continents. While at USIP, Lopez led the creation of the Global Campus online peacebuilding education platform. He has accompanied the development of university-level peacebuilding programs in Poland, Colombia, and Ecuador, the later as a Fulbright Senior Specialist.
Indiana Council on World Affairs - Great Decisions 2026 - ICWA's 8-Week Series (wildapricot.org)
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12-26-25 JIH