Expertise

International relations; human rights; race and international politics; international law and norms

At the Keough School

Zoltán I. Búzás is an associate professor of global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. He is affiliated with the Keough School’s Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights.

Courses

• Race and International Relations (undergraduate course in global affairs)
• Introduction to International Human Rights (undergraduate course in global affairs)
• International Human Rights Policy (elective course for master of global affairs)

Biography

Búzás holds a PhD in political science from the Ohio State University. Prior to joining Notre Dame, he was an assistant professor of politics at Drexel University in Philadelphia, an Open Society Fellow, and a visiting scholar at McGill University’s Centre for International Peace and Security Studies.

Research and Publications

Búzás’s book, Evading International Norms: Race and Rights in the Shadow of Legality, centers on human rights behaviors that are awful but lawful. It examines how states violate human rights norms in the shadow of technical legality—a process Búzás calls norm evasion. Based on a wealth of evidence, including more than 160 interviews, the book shows that the expulsion of Roma immigrants from France and the school segregation of Roma children in the Czech Republic violated the norm of racial equality in a technically legal fashion. 

Búzás’s research on the politics of international law and norms, race, and human rights is published in International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and Security Studies.