Director, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
jtorpey@gc.cuny.edu
@JohnCTorpey

John Torpey is Presidential Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author or editor of a number of books, including Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy (University of Minnesota Press, 1995); The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2018); Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (edited with Jane Caplan; Princeton University Press, 2001); Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (editor, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004); Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War (co-edited with Daniel Levy and Max Pensky; Verso, 2005), Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (Harvard University Press, 2006; paperback ed. Rutgers University Press, 2017); The Post-Secular in Question (co-edited with Philip Gorski, David Kyuman Kim, and Jonathan van Antwerpen; NYU Press, 2012); Legal Integration of Islam: A Transatlantic Comparison (with Christian Joppke; Harvard University Press, 2013); Transformations of Warfare in the Contemporary World (edited with David Jacobson; Temple University Press, 2017); The Three Axial Ages: Moral, Material, Mental (Rutgers University Press, 2017); The Decline of Antiracism and the Future of Progressive Politics (Routledge, 2026); Revitalizing the United Nations: Making and Keeping the Peace (Routledge, 2026).  During 2015-2016, he was President of the Eastern Sociological Society.

PhD in Political Science (CUNY Graduate Center)

Deputy Director, Ralph Bunche Institute
Director, Project on UAP Studies and International Security
ekaretny@gc.cuny.edu
@ekaretny

Dr. Eli Karetny is the deputy director and the founding director of the Institute’s Project on UAP Studies and International Security, which supports the work of international relations scholars doing UAP research. Eli organized the UAP Working Group on International Engagement to develop research programs, which foster international cooperation in the field of UAP studies. Dr. Karetny teaches a masters course on UAP Studies and National Security at the CUNY Graduate Center, serves on the advisory board of the Society for UAP Studies, and is a Senior Fellow at the Sol Foundation.

Eli is the Principal Investigator of the RBI’s core international research grants, he manages the Diplomat in Residence Program, and supervising the Visiting Scholars Program. Dr. Karetny also serves as the Institute’s program officer and legal advisor on human rights projects doing work at the United Nations, including the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) on whose advisory board he sits. Dr. Karetny is also on the advisory board of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity.

Dr. Karetny completed his PhD in International Relations and Political Theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, received a JD/MBA from Temple University, and a master’s degree in international relations from New York University. He also served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, and studies esoteric wisdom at the Hotam School in Israel. He has published in academic journals on Leo Strauss’s concept of regime change, on the application of Peter Thiel’s interpretation of the katechon to US foreign policy, and he is currently working on a paper about how Strauss’s philosophic debates with Alexander Kojeve shed light on the UAP discourse around global governance of advanced technology.

Assistant Director of Programs

PhD Candidate – Political Science (International Relations)
jacevedo@gc.cuny.edu
@huanacevedo

Juan Acevedo-Ossa is a PhD Candidate in Political Science specializing in international relations and international political economy with a special focus on multilateralism and leadership in the Global South. He came to the RBI after a spending some years working on international trade in China, Brazil and Colombia, where he also was a professor. He is a seasoned contributor of Foreign Affairs Latin America and Africa is a Country and co-author of the volume Diplomatic Strategies of Nations in the Global South Palgrave (2024). He is also a co-founder and coordinator of the China at CUNY Initiative, the Human Rights Hub, and the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity. Currently, Juan is studying the determinants of leadership of Global South countries in multilateral fora and the effects of structural power in international organizations.

Director Emeritus, Ralph Bunche Institute
Presidential Professor, Political Science
tweiss@gc.cuny.edu / CV

Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor Emeritus of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center and Director Emeritus of its Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is Distinguished Fellow, Global Governance, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs; and Global Eminence Scholar, Kyung Hee University, Korea.

He has written extensively about multilateral approaches to international peace and security, humanitarian action, and sustainable development. Recent books include: The “Third” United Nations: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think (2021); Rethinking Global Governance (2019); The United Nations and Changing World Politics (2019). Among his recent edited volumes are International Organization and Global Governance (2023), Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities (2022), and Global Governance Futures (2022)

Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

Executive Director
spawnday@globalr2p.org
@Savita_Pawnday

Savita Pawnday became Executive Director of the Global Centre in October 2021 after serving as Deputy Director for 10 years. Prior to joining the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, she was a research associate at the Program on States and Security at the Ralph Bunche Institute for Interna

tional Studies. Savita has worked in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi with Catholic Relief Services, in New York with Trickle Up, a microfinance NGO, and in India at Akanksha. She holds a M.A. from Fordham University in political economy and development, with a specialization in political economy of civil wars and a B.A. in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, University of Mumbai.

Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity

Founding Director

ddwork@gc.cuny.edu

CV

Debórah Dwork is the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center — CUNY. Pathbreaking in her early oral recording of Holocaust survivors, Dwork weaves their narratives into the history she writes. Her award-winning books include Children With A Star; Flight from the Reich; Auschwitz; and Holocaust. Renowned for her scholarship on Holocaust history, she is also a leading authority on university education in this field: she changed the academic landscape, envisioning and actualizing the first doctoral program in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies. Recipient of the International Network of Genocide Scholars Lifetime Achievement Award (2020), Debórah Dwork has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and an ACLS Fellow. She currently serves on the U.S. delegation to the 34-member state International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Center for Global Ethics and Politics

Director
Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Department at Hunter College and in the Doctoral Programs in Philosophy and Political Science at the Graduate Center
cgould@gc.cuny.edu

Carol Gould is Director of the Center for Global Ethics & Politics at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy Department at Hunter College. Additionally, she serves on the faculty of the doctoral programs in Philosophy and Political Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is Editor of the Journal of Social Philosophy. Carol’s books include Marx’s Social Ontology:  Individuality and Community in Marx’s Theory of Social Reality (1978); Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and Social Cooperation in Politics, Economy, and Society (1988); and Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (2004), which won the 2009 David Easton Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association.  She is currently completing a new book entitled Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice, to be published by Cambridge University Press.  She is currently co-directing the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series, at the Graduate Center entitled “Democratic Citizenship and the Recognition of Cultural Differences.”