Meet the Faculty: George A. Lopez
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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, 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.