SCHOOL of INTERNATIONAL SERVICE

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FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES -- Carole A. O’Leary

Carole A. O’Leary
Research Professor, School of International Service
Scholar in Residence, Center for Global Peace
E-mail: oleary@american.edu
Phone: 202-885-1378

Professor Carole A. O’Leary is currently leading a team of AU human rights experts to work with Iraqi stakeholders to establish an independent Iraqi Human Rights Commission, under a grant from the US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. She is also the co-director of a project to build organizational and management capacity for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. In July 2005, at the request of the Chairman of Iraq’s Constitutional Drafting Committee, Professor O'Leary organized a team of American University experts to advise the Committee on the legislative drafting process, specifically on issues pertaining to women’s rights, minority rights and federalism. The team based itself in Baghdad and Erbil. O’Leary also directed the USAID funded Revitalization of Iraqi Schools and Stabilization of Education (RISE) Project at the American University Center for Global Peace (AUCGP) in 2003-2004, leading the team of American University technical experts working in Iraq in that period. She is a member of the Iraq Working Group at the United States Institute of Peace and a former outside expert for the US Department of State Future of Iraq Project (2003). She joined the School of International Service in 1995 and is currently an Adjunct Research Professor in the Division of International Peace and Conflict Resolution. Professor O’Leary is also the Scholar-in-Residence for Middle East Programs at the AU Center for Global Peace. Among her publications, she is the author of “The Kurds of Iraq: Recent History, Future Prospects,” published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal in December 2002; and “Are the Kurds a Source of Instability in the Middle East?,” in The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War, edited by Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael M. Gunter, Mazda Press, 2004. With Charles MacDonald, she is the co-editor of Kurdish Identity: Human Rights and Political Status (University Press of Florida, October 2007). She is also the author of “Whither the Kurdistan Project Since 2003,” in After the Dictator: The Rebirth of Iraq, edited by Barry Rubin (M.E. Sharpe, forthcoming 2007).

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