Desmond Arias, Associate Professor of Government, received a BA from the Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His research focuses on security and politics in developing societies. In 2006, the University of North Carolina Press published Professor Arias' book, Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security. The volume examines the politics of crime and violence in Rio de Janeiro shantytowns. He has published articles on the politics of crime, NGOs, social mobilization, and human rights in Latin American Politics and Society, Qualitative Sociology, and The Journal of Latin American Studies. Professor Arias has also published a chapter on academic freedom in Latin America in Academic Freedom at the Dawn of a New Century (Stanford University Press 2006) and is currently completing a multi-country study of police reform in Latin America that has received funding from the Tinker Foundation. In 2008, he will begin a study of conflict in Latin America with support from a Fulbright Fellowship and a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor Arias teaches classes on comparative politics and comparative criminal justice and is a member of the Doctoral Faculty in Criminal Justice at the CUNY Graduate School.