Rosa Brooks

Last updated

Rosa Brooks
Guantanamo Bay- Year 15 (cropped).jpg
Brooks in 2017
Born1970 (age 5354)
New York City, New York, U.S.
Education Harvard University (BA)
Christ Church, Oxford (MSt)
Yale University (JD)
Political party Democratic
Parents
Relatives Ben Ehrenreich (brother)

Rosa Brooks is an American law professor, journalist, author and commentator on foreign policy, U.S. politics and criminal justice. She is the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. Brooks is also an adjunct scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. From April 2009 to July 2011, Brooks was a counselor to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy.

Contents

Brooks is a commentator on politics and foreign policy. She served as a columnist and contributing editor for Foreign Policy and as a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Brooks authored the 2016 book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything [1] and the 2021 book Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, which is based on her five years as a reserve police officer in Washington, D.C.

At Georgetown Law, Brooks founded the Center for Innovations in Community Safety, formerly the Innovative Policing Program, which in 2017 launched the Police for Tomorrow Fellowship Program with Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. She founded the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and the Transition Integrity Project. In 2021, [2] 2022 [3] and 2023, [4] Washingtonian magazine listed Brooks as one of Washington's "most influential people."

Early life and education

Rosa Brooks is the daughter of author Barbara Ehrenreich (née Alexander) and psychologist John Ehrenreich. Her parents separated when she was young and she also grew up with her stepparents, Gary Stevenson and Sharon McQuaide. She was named after Rosa Parks. [5] Her brother is journalist and author Ben Ehrenreich. Brooks was born in a public clinic in New York City. She attended elementary school in Syosset and briefly attended Syosset High School in Syosset, New York, but left early after two years to attend Harvard. In 1991, she earned a Bachelor of Arts (history and literature) from Harvard University. [6] [7]

While an undergraduate, Brooks lived in Lowell House and served as president of the Phillips Brooks House Association, Harvard's undergraduate public service organization. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a Marshall Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford. [6] In 1993, Brooks received a Master of Studies from Oxford University in Social anthropology. [7] In 1996, she received a J.D. from Yale Law School. [6] [7]

Career

Brooks was a lecturer at Yale Law School, [7] where she was the director of Yale Law School's human rights program. She was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, a board member of Amnesty International USA and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. [7] Brooks served on the board of the Open Society Foundation's US Programs Fund and as a senior advisor at the US Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. [7] Brooks was also a consultant for the Open Society Institute and for Human Rights Watch. [7]

Brooks was a member of the Policy Committee of the National Security Network. [7] From 2001 to 2006, she was an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. [7] Brooks has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times (June 2005 to April 9, 2009) [8] [9] and, since 2007, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. [7]

From April 2009 to July 2011, she was on public service leave from Georgetown to serve as counselor to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. She received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service for her work at the Defense Department. [10]

Brooks currently serves on the board of the Harper's Magazine Foundation, the Advisory Committee of National Security Action, the Steering Committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and the board of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative. [10]

From 2016 to 2020, she was also a reserve police officer with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and she received the Chief of Police Special Award in 2019. [11] She has also been active in Democratic presidential campaigns. She served most recently as a volunteer advisor on defense policy to the Biden campaign, and she is frequently consulted as an expert advisor on issues of national security, criminal justice, democracy and rule of law.[ citation needed ] In July 2024, after Biden's weak debate performance, she promoted a "blitz primary" alternative to fielding Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate. [12]

Writings

Brooks' scholarly work has focused mostly on national security, terrorism and rule of law issues, international law, human rights, law of war, failed states, and, more recently, criminal justice and policing. Along with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman, Brooks coauthored Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law After Military Interventions (2006). [13] Brooks is also the author of numerous scholarly articles published in law reviews. [14] [15] [16]

Brooks authored the 2016 book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. [17] It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was selected by Military Times as one of the ten best books of the year. The book was also shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award. [18]

In 2021, she published Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, which is about her experience as a reserve police officer in Washington, D.C. [19] Tangled Up in Blue was selected by the Washington Post as one of the best non-fiction books of 2021.

Political Commentary

In addition to serving as a weekly opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times and Foreign Policy , Brooks was a founder of Foreign Policy's weekly podcast, The E.R., [20] and is now a member of the Deep State Radio podcast team. She has been a frequent guest and panelist on MSNBC, Fox, CNN and NPR. [21] [22] Brooks has contributed numerous op-eds and book reviews to the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic , The Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications. [23]

Personal life

Brooks has two children. [24] Brooks was previously married to the Yale literary critic Peter Brooks, [24] [25] and subsequently married LTC Joseph Mouer, [26] a now-retired Army Special Forces officer.

Works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Ehrenreich</span> American writer and journalist (1941–2022)

Barbara Ehrenreich was an American author and political activist. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America. She was a widely read and award-winning columnist and essayist and the author of 21 books. Ehrenreich was best known for her 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, a memoir of her three-month experiment surviving on a series of minimum-wage jobs. She was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and the Erasmus Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgetown University Law Center</span> Private law school in Washington, D.C., US

The Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment, with over 2,000 students. It frequently receives the most full-time applications of any law school in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Kagan</span> American historian (born 1958)

Robert Kagan is an American columnist and political scientist. He is a neoconservative scholar. He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal internationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samantha Power</span> American academic, author and diplomat (born 1970)

Samantha Jane Power is an Irish-American journalist, diplomat, and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. Power is a member of the Democratic Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Katyal</span> American lawyer and academic (born 1970)

Neal Kumar Katyal is an American appellate lawyer and professor of law. He is a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm and is the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Peter Preston Brooks is an American literary theorist who is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Yale University and Andrew W. Mellon Scholar in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He has been Professor in the Department of English and School of Law at the University of Virginia. Among his many accomplishments is the founding of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2003. Brooks is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work cuts across French and English literature, law, and psychoanalysis. He was influenced by fellow Yale scholar, Paul de Man, to whom his book Reading for the Plot is dedicated. His 2022 book Seduced By Story was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award in criticism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David D. Cole</span> American legal scholar

David D. Cole is the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Before joining the ACLU in July 2016, Cole was the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at the Georgetown University Law Center from March 2014 through December 2016. He has published in various legal fields including constitutional law, national security, criminal justice, civil rights, and law and literature. Cole has litigated several significant First Amendment cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, as well a number of influential cases concerning civil rights and national security. He is also a legal correspondent to several mainstream media outlets and publications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura DeNardis</span> American author and scholar

Laura DeNardis is an American author and a scholar of Internet governance and technical infrastructure. She is the Professor and Endowed Chair in Technology, Ethics, and Society at Georgetown University. DeNardis is an affiliated Fellow of the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School and served as its executive director from 2008 to 2011. She previously served as a Senior Fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and the Director of Research for the Global Commission on Internet Governance. With a background in information technology engineering and a doctorate in Science and Technology Studies (STS), her research studies the social and political implications of Internet technical architecture and governance. Domestically, she served as an appointed member of the U.S. Department of State Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy (ACICIP) during the Obama Administration. She has more than two decades of experience as an expert consultant in Internet Governance to Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and government agencies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Wright (author)</span> American analyst, author and journalist

Robin B. Wright, is an American foreign affairs analyst, author and journalist who has covered wars, revolutions and uprisings around the world. She writes for The New Yorker and is a fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Wright has authored five books and coauthored or edited three others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melody Barnes</span> American lawyer and political advisor

Melody C. Barnes is an American lawyer and political advisor. Formerly an aide and chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Barnes later worked at the Center for American Progress, a think tank, before joining Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. After Obama took office as president, Barnes was appointed director of the Domestic Policy Council, serving in that post from January 2009 to January 2012. After leaving the White House, Barnes assumed roles at the Aspen Institute and New York University. Since 2016, she has been at the University of Virginia, where she teaches law and is the co-director of the UVA Democracy Initiative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bruce Hoffman</span> American counterterrorism analyst and foreign policy expert

Bruce R. Hoffman is an American political analyst. He specializes in the study of terrorism, counter-terrorism, insurgency, and counter-insurgency. Hoffman serves as the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a professor at the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University. In addition, he is the Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor of Terrorism Studies at the University of St Andrews, and is the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan P. Crawford</span> Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

Susan P. Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She served as President Barack Obama's Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and is a columnist for WIRED. She is a former board member of ICANN, the founder of OneWebDay, and a legal scholar. Her research focuses on telecommunications and information law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chai Feldblum</span> American legal scholar and human rights activist (born 1959)

Chai Rachel Feldblum is an American legal scholar and activist for disability and LGBT rights. A former law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, she served as Commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). She was nominated to the position by president Barack Obama in 2009. In April 2010, she received a recess appointment to the EEOC, and in December 2010 she was confirmed by the United States Senate. The Senate confirmed her in December 2013 for a second term on the Commission which expired in July 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelia Pillard</span> American federal judge (born 1961)

Cornelia Thayer Livingston Pillard, known professionally as Nina Pillard, is an American lawyer and jurist serving since 2013 as a U.S. circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Before becoming a judge, Pillard was a law professor at Georgetown University.

Daniel Marcus is an American lawyer and member of the faculty of Washington College of Law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noura Erakat</span> Palestinian-American academic (born 1980)

Noura Saleh Erakat is a Palestinian-American activist, university professor, legal scholar, and human rights attorney. She is currently an associate professor at Rutgers University, specializing in international studies. Her primary focus is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and she is a vocal critic of Israel.

Viola Herms Drath was a Washington, D.C., author, socialite and a German-American member of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy for over thirty years. She was murdered, at age 91, by her second husband, Albrecht Gero Muth.

John Ehrenreich is an American clinical psychologist and social critic, who has published books on health policy, humanitarian policy, US history and US social policy. He is known for his development of the idea of the "medical–industrial complex" and the concept of the "professional–managerial class".

Janne E. Nolan was an American academic, foreign policy advisor, and expert on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation. She held senior positions in the Department of State, as a staffer for the Senate, and served on multiple blue ribbon commissions. She was well known for supporting generations of women in the traditionally male dominated field of nuclear security.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Wilkins</span> American lawyer and government official

Elizabeth Wood Claytor Wilkins is an American lawyer serving as the director of the office of policy planning at the Federal Trade Commission. From 2021 to 2022, she was Senior Advisor to Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023.

References

  1. Brooks, Rosa (July 25, 2017). How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   978-1-4767-7787-0.
  2. "Washington's Most Influential People". Washingtonian . February 25, 2021. Archived from the original on March 31, 2022.
  3. "Washington DC's 500 Most Influential People". Washingtonian . May 3, 2022. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022.
  4. "Washington DC's 500 Most Influential People of 2023". Washingtonian . April 27, 2023. Archived from the original on July 5, 2024. Retrieved July 9, 2024.
  5. Barbara Ehrenreich
  6. 1 2 3 "Profile Rosa Brooks". law.georgetown.edu.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Brooks, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks (2006). "About Rosa Brooks". Rosa Brooks. Archived from the original on February 21, 2007. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Rosa Brooks is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. (She is currently on leave from Georgetown to serve as Special Counsel at the Open Society Institute in New York).
  8. Brooks, Rosa (June 22, 2011). "Rosa Brooks". Los Angeles Times . Archived from the original on June 22, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2021. This will be my last column for the L.A. Times. After four years, I'll soon be starting a stint at the Pentagon as an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy. (Rosa Brooks is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, Brooks taught at the University of Virginia and at Yale. She has also served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a board member of Amnesty International USA, a fellow of the Kennedy School of Government's Carr Center, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. Her government and NGO work has involved extensive travel and field research in countries ranging from Iraq and Kosovo to Indonesia and Sierra Leone.)
  9. Brooks, Rosa. "Los Angeles Times Columns". Rosa Brooks. Archived from the original on May 16, 2007. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  10. 1 2 "Rosa Brooks". Georgetown Law. Archived from the original on January 27, 2021. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Associate Dean for Centers and Institutes; The Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy, Rosa Brooks teaches courses on international law, national security, constitutional law and criminal justice. She joined the Law Center faculty in 2007, after serving as an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. From 2016-2018, Brooks served at the Law Center's Associate Dean for Graduate Programs. Brooks is also an Adjunct Senior Scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute and a Senior Fellow at New America.
  11. 1 2 "Tangled Up in Blue - Penguin Random House" . Retrieved February 18, 2021.
  12. Picciotto, Rebecca (July 7, 2024). "Democratic power players are circulating a proposal for Biden to exit, launch 'blitz primary'". CNBC . Archived from the original on July 9, 2024. Retrieved July 9, 2024.
  13. 1 2 "Can Might Make Rights?". Cambridge University Press. Retrieved August 5, 2016.
  14. Brooks, Rosa Ehrenreich (2006). "We the People's Executive". Rosa Brooks. Archived from the original on February 21, 2007. Retrieved April 17, 2021. 115 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 88
  15. "Rosa Brooks - The Politics of the Geneva Conventions". Archived from the original on February 20, 2007.
  16. "Rosa Brooks - War Everywhere". Archived from the original on February 21, 2007.
  17. Evans, Harold (August 5, 2016). "Rosa Brooks Examines War's Expanding Boundaries". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved December 7, 2020.
  18. "Rosa Brooks | Penguin Random House". PenguinRandomhouse.com. Retrieved May 13, 2021.
  19. "An Arresting 'Tangled Up in Blue' | Inside Higher Ed". www.insidehighered.com. Retrieved June 30, 2021.
  20. "FP's The Editor's Roundtable (The E.R.)". Foreign Policy. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  21. "Rosa Brooks". Bloggingheads.tv. Retrieved April 18, 2016.
  22. "News Hounds: Liberal Lady Lawyer Runs Rings Around Bill O'Reilly on Subject of GITMO Detainees". newshounds.us.
  23. Brooks, Rosa (April 24, 2020). "Police officers nationwide need to consider going hands-off during this crisis". Washington Post.
  24. 1 2 Sherman, Scott. "Class Warrior". Scott Sherman. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Ehrenreich moved to Charlottesville in 2001 to be near her thirty-two-year-old daughter, Rosa, a law professor at the University of Virginia, and her granddaughter, Anna, now two. (She also has a son, Ben, who writes for L.A. Weekly.) When Ehrenreich is in town, she will often, in the late afternoon, get in her Honda Civic — which bears a "Proud to Be An American Against War" bumper sticker — and drive to Rosa's farmhouse on the outskirts of Charlottesville, a place Rosa shares with her husband, the Yale literary critic Peter Brooks, who is currently teaching at UVA.
  25. "Brooks, Peter 1938–". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Peter Preston Brooks
  26. Helaine Olen (August 10, 2012). "The Smaller, Cheaper, Just-for-Us Wedding". The New York Times. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
  27. Senior, Jennifer (August 1, 2016). "Review: 'How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything'". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved August 5, 2016. At its finest, "How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything" is a dynamic work of reportage, punctuated by savory details like this one. But Ms. Brooks has a larger ambition: She wants to explore exactly what happens to a society when the customary distinctions between war and peace melt away.