Gilburt Loescher, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Notre Dame, suffered serious injuries in Tuesday’s suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq. He is currently being treated at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.p. Loescher, 58, was working in association with Brazilian diplomat and UN envoy Vieira de Mello, who was killed in the attack.p. “Gil is a world renowned expert on refugee issues and humanitarian crises whose scholarly writings are highly regarded,” said George Lopez, professor of political science and director of policy studies in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame. "As a dedicated, policy-relevant scholar, he is regularly involved as a consultant and researcher for international agencies working in displacement and refugee areas. His affiliations include the Refugee Studies Program at Oxford and continued contact with the UN High Commission for Refugees.p. “With a colleague who died in the blast, Arthur Helton of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, Gil had been engaged in writing a number of reports for the ‘openDemocracy’ organization on the humanitarian conditions within Iraq after the war, as well as the prospects for successful reconstruction.” (Reports by Helton and Loescher are available at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/article-2-1424.jsp.. )p. A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1975 and a Fellow in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Loescher is the author of “Refugee Movements and International Security” and “Beyond Charity: International Cooperation and the Global Refugee Problem,” and the co-author of “Calculated Kindness: Refugees and America’s Half-Open Door, 1945 to the Present.” He co-edited and contributed to “Refugees and International Relations” and “The Moral Nation: Humanitarianism and U.S. Foreign Policy Today.”p. A 1967 graduate of St. Mary’s College of California, Loescher earned his master’s degree from the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies in 1969 and his doctorate from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1975.
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