George A. Lopez

Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies

George A. Lopez

321 Hesburgh Center for International Studies
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556

(574) 631-7498
lopez.1@nd.edu

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George A. Lopez

Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies

Expertise

Economic sanctions; peacebuilding; security; human rights; United Nations; North Korea; peace studies program development

At the Keough School

George A. Lopez is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, where he was a founding faculty member.

Biography

Lopez is a leading expert on economic sanctions, peacebuilding, and various peace-related issues. During 36 years of affiliation 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 in 2001-02 he assisted with the Council’s post-9/11 public programming throughout the U.S.

He held a Senior Jennings Randolph Fellowship at USIP from 2009-10 and served as a member of the United Nations Panel of Experts for monitoring and implementing UN Sanctions on North Korea from 2010-11. 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, DC.  In autumn 2019 he was named as one of the inaugural non-residential Fellows of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Since 1992, Lopez has advised the United Nations, various international agencies, and governments on economic sanctions issues, ranging from assessing their humanitarian impact to the design of targeted financial sanctions. 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. He is a frequent media commentator regarding sanctions issues writing often for The Hill and Responsible Statecraft.

Lopez has a deep commitment to nurturing the development of high quality peace studies and peacebuilding education at the collegiate level. He is founding director of the Kroc Institute’s annual Summer Institute on Teaching Peace in the 21st Century. This program has 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. Most recently he has accompanied the development of university level peacebuilding programs in Poland, Colombia, and Ecuador, the latter as a Fulbright Senior Specialist.