The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

Jason Marc Cross (Ph.D. candidate, Cultural Anthropology, Duke University) completed his J.D. work at Duke Law School and earned an M.A. in History & Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Jason’s scholarship examines relations between law and knowledge production in the interplay between democratic institutions and social movements. His dissertation is an ethnographic study of the politics of expertise and monitoring procedures in post-war democratic governance reform in El Salvador. The study looks at the development and implementation of monitoring and evaluation models for rule of law, citizen participation and accountability reforms, in order to understand the impact of monitoring techniques on the local adaptation and global circulation of democratic reform programs.

 Jason’s scholarship on the politics of governance expertise is also informed by practical experience: founding and managing a health NGO in Ecuador and continuing to serve actively on the board of directors; legal assistance to El Salvador’s Ministry of Health in reforming the pharmaceutical sector; advocacy with Knowledge Ecology International on a development agenda at the World Intellectual Property Organization; legal work with a Washington, DC law firm on international commercial matters; and community-organizing in Durham, NC, achieving living wage, jobs training, and healthcare policies. In 2007-08, with the Duke Guantanamo Defense Clinic, Jason assisted the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions, U.S. Department of Defense, with the defense of Salim Hamdan and Mohammed Jawad in the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II.

Students will have the opportunity to meet the candidate from 4:30-5:00pm in room 609