About

I’ve been active in peace-related issues since shortly after I enlisted in the Army during the Vietnam War. (Here’s the story of my transformation into a peace advocate.) I teach peace studies and nonviolent social change at the University of Notre Dame and am the Director of Policy Studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. I have also served as Director of Kroc’s Peace Accords Matrix, which is responsible for monitoring implementation of the Colombia peace agreement.

I’ve written or edited 22 books, including Soldiers in Revolt (Haymarket Books); Gandhi and Beyond: Nonviolence for a New Political Age (Paradigm); and edited, with George A. Lopez, Uniting Against Terror: Cooperative Nonmilitary Responses to the Global Terrorist Threat (MIT Press). My most recent books are Truth Seekers: Voices of Peace and Nonviolence from Gandhi to Pope Francis, editor (Orbis Books); Governance for Peace (Cambridge University Press), with Conor Seyle and Kristen Wall; Towards Nuclear Zero (IISS/Routledge), with Raimo Väyrynen; and Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge University Press). George Lopez and I wrote or edited a series of major works on multilateral sanctions, including Smart Sanctions, Sanctions and the Search for Security and The Sanctions Decade. 

I’ve conducted research for foreign ministries of Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands and have consulted and advised agencies of the United Nations, the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the International Peace Academy, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I graduated from Notre Dame in 1968, hold an M.A. from New York University, and completed my doctoral studies at the Union Institute in residence at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.  In 1978, I became executive director of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. I was active in the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s and in 2002 helped to create Win Without War, a coalition of national organizations opposing the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I have served as director of the Fourth Freedom Forum in Goshen, Indiana, and continue to serve as chair of the Forum’s board of directors.

If you’d like to reach me, please drop me a line at dcortrig@nd.edu.