Director

Enrique Desmond Arias

Enrique Desmond Arias is the director of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Affairs and professor of Political Science at the Graduate Center.  He is the Austin W. Marxe Professor of Western Hemisphere Affairs at Baruch College.  Professor Arias currently serves as program co-chair for the 2024 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association in Bogotá, Colombia.  He is the author of Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean (Cambridge University Press) and Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro (University of North Carolina Press).  He is the co-editor of Violent Democracies in Latin America (Duke University Press) and Cocaine:  From Coca Fields to the Streets (Duke University Press).  He has published articles in Political Geography, Comparative Politics, the Latin American Research Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, Global Crime, and Policing and Society.  This research has been funded by various organizations including the National Science Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the United States Department of Defense Minerva Research Initiative, the CAF-Banco de Desarollo de America Latina, the National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has worked as a consultant to the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UNHabitat).

Professor Arias received his BA from the Johns Hopkins University and his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He previously was a professor at George Mason University and at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  He was a Fulbright visiting professor at the IESP (formerly IUPERJ) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Professor Arias’ CV can be seen here