Jonathan Graubart

Jonathan Graubart is an assistant professor of political science at San Diego State specializing in the areas of international relations, international law, transnational activism, human rights, and globalization. He received his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2002 and his JD from UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall in 1989.

Graubart's most recent publication is "'Politicizing a New Breed of 'Legalized' Transnational Political Opportunity Structures: Labor Activists Uses of NAFTA's Citizen-Petition Mechanisms" in the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law (2005). He is presently completing a book manuscript on NAFTA's labor and environmental institutions and working on a new project that examines the role of humanitarian NGOs in shaping the new and expanded "security" agenda of the UN Security Council. Graubart has published articles in a number of edited book volumes and journals. The latter include International Politics, the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Policy, California Law Review, Tikkun Magazine, and Monthly Review.

Prior to becoming a professor at San Diego State, Graubart experienced a varied professional career, which includes (like John Roberts) working for President Ronald Reagan (as an attorney at the US Treasury Department) and (unlike John Roberts) for Michael Lerner (as an editorial staff member at Tikkun Magazine). As a San Francisco attorney, Graubart engaged in plaintiff's-side civil litigation against perpetrators of securities fraud (his first case being against Walt Disney) and worked pro bono in the areas of poverty law and asylum law for political refugees from Central America.

Graubart was once quite interested in professional sports but is grateful to Art Modell for unwittingly freeing Graubart from this syndrome (though he has still been spotted by Homeland Security officers glancing at the box scores of Cleveland Indians games). Most of his free time is spent driving two of his baby children, Emma and Bakunin, to the Prince K Soccer Academy, and the other two children, Goliath and Rosa, to the Bronstein Archery Camp. He and Goliath are also busy on home improvement projects.