Rosa Brooks


Rosa Brooks is an American law professor, serving as the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy at Georgetown University Law Center. A journalist, author and foreign policy expert, she is the author of the 2016 book , which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was selected by the 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. Brooks is also an adjunct scholar at West Point's and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
From April 2009 to July 2011, Brooks served as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. She received the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service for her work.
Brooks is a frequent commentator on politics and foreign policy. She served for years as a columnist and contributing editor for Foreign Policy and as a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
At Georgetown Law, Brooks is a founder of Georgetown Law's , which in 2016 launched the with Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. She is also a founder of the .

Career

Brooks' work history has included previous government service as a senior adviser to Assistant Secretary Harold Hongju Koh at the U.S. Department of State. She has also taught at the University of Virginia School of Law, and worked as Special Counsel to the President at the Open Society Institute, George Soros' philanthropic foundation. She is the former director of Yale Law School's human rights program. She has also been a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, a board member of Amnesty International USA and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. She served on the board of the Open Society Foundation's US Programs Fund and currently serves on the board of the Harper's Magazine Foundation, the Advisory Committee of and the Steering Committee of the .

Scholarship

Brooks' scholarly work has focused mostly on national security, terrorism and rule of law issues, international law, human rights, law of war, and failed states. Along with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman, Brooks coauthored Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law After Military Interventions. Brooks is also the author of numerous scholarly articles published in law reviews. Brooks' most recent book is How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything.

Political commentary

In addition to her columns for the Los Angeles Times and Foreign Policy, Brooks was a founder of Foreign Policy's weekly podcast, The E.R., and is now a member of the podcast team. She has been a frequent guest and panelist on MSNBC, Fox, CNN and NPR. She is a frequent contributor of op-eds and book reviews to the Washington Post and other publications.

Education

In 1991 Brooks earned a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University. While an undergraduate at Harvard, Brooks served as president of the Phillips Brooks House Association, Harvard's undergraduate public service organization. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard and was a Marshall Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1996 she received a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Personal life

Brooks is the daughter of best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich and author and psychologist John Ehrenreich, and the sister of journalist and author Ben Ehrenreich. Brooks has two children and is married to LTC Joseph Mouer, a now-retired Army Special Forces officer. She is also a reserve police officer with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.

Books