Staff
Downing A. Thomas, Director
Appointed as Director in July 2007, Downing A. Thomas is associate dean for University of Iowa International Programs and professor in the UI's French and Italian Department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Thomas received his doctorate in French literature from New York University in 1991 and joined the UI faculty that year. He has served on the Board of Regents, State of Iowa's International Studies Committee and as a UI International Programs representative to the Internationalization Laboratory of the American Council on Education, and has chaired the IP Strategic Planning Committee. In 2005, the French government honored him as Chevalier, or Knight, in the Order of Academic Palms. In February 2007, Thomas was elected to a one-year term as president of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages, an organization including 1,000 schools in the United States and Canada. In addition to his current leadership positions, he served as chairman of the Department of French and Italian from 1999 to 2007.
Amy Weismann, Deputy Director
Amy Weismann is an alumna of Bryn Mawr College (1993, A.B.) and the University of Iowa College of Law (2000 J.D. with Distinction). Amy served as a Law Clerk for the judges of the Seventh Judicial District of Iowa, and as a Legal Intern in the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Amy also assisted the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice with the editing of the final judgment produced by the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal 2000 for the trial of Japanese military sexual slavery. Before law school, Amy was a humanitarian aid worker in refugee camps in the former Yugoslavia, and a resettlement caseworker for the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services affiliate offices in Eastern Iowa. She lives here with her husband, a soccer coach and naturalized American citizen from Sarajevo, their two cats and extended family.
Shelton Stromquist, Associate Director for University Affairs
Shelton Stromquist received his BA from Yale and his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh. He is Professor of History at The University of Iowa with research and teaching interests in U.S. and comparative social and labor history. His most recent book is Reinventing "the People": The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (2006). As a UI Global Scholar, he has researched the municipal labor and socialist politics in Australia, England, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand. His essay, co-authored with Hugh Cunningham, "Child Labor and the Rights of Children: Historical Patterns of Decline and Persistence," was published in 2005 in Child Labor and Human Rights: Making Children Matter, edited by UICHR Interim Director Burns Weston. Professor Stromquist was named a Collegiate Fellow of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2004-2010).
Dorothy M. Paul, Associate Director for Community Affairs
Dorothy Paul has served as the UICHR Associate Director for Community Affairs since 2002. From its inception in 2001 until 2006, she was the coordinator for “One Community One Book,” an annual county-wide reading project. From 1979 to 2000, Paul was Executive Director of the Iowa United Nations Association-USA. During this period, she created diverse educational programs illustrating how international issues were applicable to the domestic sphere. In 1995, she was awarded a national UNA-USA award recognizing her creation of the world class programs in Iowa. Dorothy has an M.A. degree in American Studies from the University of Iowa.
Burns H. Weston, Senior Scholar
Following his resignation after six years as UICHR founding director on December 31, 2004, and in recognition of his worldwide reputation as a respected teacher and scholar of international human rights, Professor Weston was named lifetime Senior Scholar of the UI Center for Human Rights. The author of many books and articles in the field, his most recent books include The Future of International Human Rights (Transnational Publishers, Inc., 1999; with Stephen P. Marks); Child Labor and Human Rights: Making Children Matter (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2005); and Human Rights in the World Community: Issues and Action (University of Pennsylvania Press, 3d ed. 2006; with Richard Pierre Claude). Also noteworthy are his essay "Human Rights" in the 2005 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and his award-winning textbook International Law and World Order: A Problem-Oriented Coursebook (Thomson-West, 4th ed. 2006; with Richard A. Falk, Hilary Charlesworth, and Andrew L. Strauss). For further details, visit Burns Weston's website.
Liz Crooks, Secretary
Liz was born and raised in Iowa City. After a six-year stint in Chicago, she moved back to her hometown. Liz has worked at the University since 1995, and joined the UICHR staff in 2004. She is married and raising three children. Liz is also an elected member of the Iowa City Community School District Board of Directors.