Ideas & Action Building a Human Rights Agenda

We are thrilled to have 9 contributors to the The Leading Rogue State: The United States and Human Rights join us as participants.

John Barnshaw

is Research Projects Coordinator at Disaster Research Center and a Doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. As Projects Coordinator, Barnshaw works with colleagues on a variety of research projects ranging from the evacuation of lower Manhattan during the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks to the more recent evacuation of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His research interests include: stratification and inequality in a variety of social contexts ranging from disasters to educational tracking to infectious epidemiology.



For the past two years, Barnshaw has been a Summer Scholar in the Modern Methods in Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program through Harvard University and Karolinska Institutet. He has given lectures and presentations across the United States as well as several in international meetings. Recently, he presented research findings in Stockholm (Sweden), Montreal and Toronto (Canada), emphasizing sociological collaboration between epidemiologists, biostatisticians, public policy makers and educators.



In addition to his international presentations, Barnshaw has also been involved in assisting local villagers in sustainable development projects in Mbita and Mfangano, Kenya ranging from environmental improvement to micro-enterprise. His current disaster research focuses on inequality in social networks and communities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Judith Blau

is co-author, with Alberto Moncada, of Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision, Justice in the United States, and Freedoms and Solidarities, and Two Logics: Globalization vs. Human Rights (2008, forthcoming). She is professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and president of the US chapter of Sociologists without Borders.

David L. Brunsma

is Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor on numerous books including: The Leading Rogue State: The U.S. and Human Rights (Paradigm, 2008), Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (Rowman
& Littlefield, 2008), The Sociology of Katrina (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), and The School Uniform Movement and What It Tells Us About American Education: A Symbolic Crusade (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2004). He is a member of Sociologists Without Borders, Section Editor of the Race and Ethnicity Section of Sociology Compass, and a mentor, father, husband, colleague, and friend. He
lives in Columbia, MO with his family.

Mark Frezzo

is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Assistant
Director of Peace Studies (undergraduate program) at Florida Atlantic
University. He publishes and teaches in the areas of social movements, political economy, development sociology, and the sociology of human rights. He is particularly interested in the role of post-Fordism and neoliberalism in provoking both collaboration and competition among movements, NGOs, and UN agencies in the quest for economic, social, and cultural rights. He is a member of Sociologists without Borders.

Tanya Golash-Boza

(PhD North Carolina, Chapel Hill - 2005) is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Sociology and American Studies at the University of Kansas. She has been awarded several fellowships, including one from African-American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007 and one from the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Ford Foundation in 2005 for her research on discourses of blackness in Peru. Dr. Golash-Boza is currently working on a book-length manuscript, tentatively titled: Yo Soy Negro: Discourses of Blackness in Peru. She has also conducted research on the Latino/a community in the United States, and has published an article in International Migration Review on the advantages of bilingualism for immigrants in the US, articles in Social Forces and Ethnic and Racial Studies on the relationship between race and assimilation, and an article on the human costs of immigration policies in the Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies. She also has published several book chapters on immigration policy in the US. Dr. Golash-Boza teaches courses on race in the US and Latin America and on globalization and immigration.

Jean Lynch

is a professor in the Department of Sociology and
Gerontology and an affiliate in Women's Studies at Miami University, Ohio. Her specializations include gay and lesbian studies, disability, and applied research. She has published extensively on gay and lesbian relationships, particularly stepfamilies and identity issues. Jean M. Lynch Professor Dept of Sociology and Gerontology lynchjm@muohio.edu

Alberto Moncada

divides his time between being president of
Sociologists Without Borders and president of Unesco Valencia



He left behind an academic carrier in Stanford, Madrid, FIU but still write
s books, give speeches and does work in the media.

Rubén G. Rumbaut

joined the UCI Sociology Department in July 2002. Since 1991 he has directed (with Alejandro Portes) the landmark Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), which has followed the trajectories into early adulthood of thousands of youth representing dozens of different nationalities, primarily from Latin America and Asia. He also directs, in collaboration with a team of UC colleagues, a large-scale study of Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA); and is involved in comparative research on transitions to adulthood, with multi-ethnic
samples in San Diego and other field sites across the United States. Throughout the 1980s he conducted several of the principal studies of the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (including the IHARP and SARYS projects). In the 1990s, he served as academic advisor for the PBS television series "Americas" focusing on Latin American and Caribbean societies, as well as on Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the United States. And to date he has continued to examine the Cuban diaspora, the history of U.S.-Cuba relations,
and factors affecting the future of Cuba. His research has focused on types of immigrants and refugees and their contexts of exit and reception, intergenerational differences in adaptation, bilingualism and language loss, ethnic identity, citizenship and national membership, infant health and mortality, fertility, socioeconomic mobility, educational achievement and aspirations, crime and incarceration, depression and self-esteem, and paradoxes of assimilation—-as well as immigration policies and politics, and the social origins of immigration scholars. He is the author of more than one hundred scientific papers on immigrants and refugees in the U.S., and coauthor or coeditor of a dozen books, including Immigrant America: A Portrait (new 3rd
edition, 2006) and Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, the latter of which won the 2002 Distinguished Book Award of the American Sociological Association and the 2002 Thomas and Znaniecki Award for best book in the immigration field.

Dave Overfelt

is currently working on his dissertation at the
University of Missouri- Columbia. In his work he is largely focused on coming to understand the participatory construction of spaces and the ways to create forms of government that allow for greater participation in the creation of the city.