Joshua Cooper balances academia and advocacy focusing on international human rights law through diplomacy and direct action. He is able to persuade passionately and pressure persistently in global human rights mechanisms with intensity and intellect. Cooper is an educator with over a decade of experience teaching at numerous higher education institutions in Hawaii. He has developed curriculum in over 40 courses in political science to focus on core themes of nonviolence, ecology, human rights and social justice. Cooper has taught over 100 classes at the University of Hawaii. He teaches at summer programs with a specialty on human rights of indigenous peoples at the National University of Ireland, Galway and the School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C. as well as intensive courses on emerging issues in peace and human rights at the International Training Center for Teaching Peace and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently the Dean of the International Human and Peoples Rights Law Program in Vienna, Austria.
Cooper is a human rights advocate engaging in global and regional mechanisms guaranteeing fundamental freedoms. Cooper has participated as an official observer at United Nations meetings in both the charter and treaty bodies of the human rights machinery for over a decade. He also negotiated the recent UN Sustainable Development Goals for the 2015 development agenda. Cooper will participate in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations in Paris in December 2015.
Cooper was recently appointed on the US Human Rights Network Universal Periodic Review Task Force Co-Chair at the UN Human Rights Council. He briefs fellow members on the intricate workings and also developing strategy. Cooper presented keynote addresses to nationwide gatherings of human rights groups to guarantee promotion and protection of human rights. He continues to volunteer for various indigenous peoples movements in the global human rights machinery.
