David E. Guinn

Expertise:
International development in democracy and governance; international public law; human rights; intellectual property; human trafficking; religion and violence; post-conflict and peacebuilding; and multicultural and religious pluralism.

Biography:
David Guinn has more than 30 years’ experience in law and international development. He served as a Senior Fellow with the Center for Policy Research where he was the curriculum specialist on the USAID funded Parliamentary Support Project in Zimbabwe. He was also previously a Senior Associate with the Center for International Development where he managed major projects in Afghanistan, Cote d’Ivoire, and Lebanon. Dr. Guinn’s interests and expertise spans a wide range of development concerns in democracy and governance including rule of law, international public law, human rights, intellectual property, public policy, research, training and project management (USAID, State Department, private foundation) with special expertise in post-conflict, and multicultural and religious pluralism. His international project work includes work in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, and Central America working with, among others, the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq/DynCorp, the International Development Law Organization, and as Executive Director of the International Human Rights Law Institute at the DePaul University College of Law, where he also taught as an adjunct professor of law.

In addition to his work as a development professional, Dr. Guinn is also a noted moral, political and legal philosopher and human rights advocate, having written extensively on issues of national and international human rights, pluralism, and law in thirteen books and over 80 articles and book chapters. Representative of these are: Protecting Jerusalem’s Holy Sites: Negotiating a Sacred Peace (Cambridge, 2006), Handbook of Bioethics and Religion (Oxford UP, 2006) (selected for the Library of Science and Religion 2010), Faith on Trial: Religious Freedom and the Theory of Deep Diversity (Lexington Books, 2002/2006), In Modern Bondage: Trafficking in the Americas, Guinn & Steiglich, eds. (Transnational, 2003), Religion and Civil Discourse (Park Ridge Center, 1997) and Religion and Law in the Global Village (McGill 1999). Organizational Ethics in Health Care (Jossey Bass, 2001), of which he is a co-author, won the 2002 James Hamilton Book of the Year Award. Dr. Guinn is currently working on a new book: Constantine’s Standard: Meditations on Religion, Violence, Law, Politics and a Faith to Die For and Arguing Rights:  A Pragmatic Approach to Human Rights.

Originally employed in the theater, Dr. Guinn obtained his law degree from Fordham University Law School and practiced entertainment and creative rights law for almost fifteen years. He returned to school and obtained a Masters from the University of Chicago and a PhD from McGill University in Montreal.