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UNC Asheville Professor Mark Gibney Given National Human Rights Scholarship Award

August 25, 2011

Mark Gibney, UNC Asheville professor, author, and creator of the website politicalterrorscale.org, has been named the 2011 Distinguished Scholar of Human Rights by the American Political Science Association (APSA). He will receive the award at APSA’s annual meeting, which will take place September 1-4 in Seattle.

Gibney developed the Political Terror Scale in 1984, and, in collaboration with other UNC Asheville faculty and students, he maintains this online scorecard of political violence which is frequently cited in scholarly works and by human rights advocates. At UNC Asheville, Gibney teaches courses in constitutional law, human rights and international politics, immigration and refugee law and policy, and individual rights and civil liberties.

Gibney had a key role in three important books on human rights published last year. He was author of “Global Refugee Crisis” (2nd edition, ABC-CLIO), co-author of “The Politics of Human Rights: The Quest for Dignity” (Cambridge University Press), and co-editor of “Universal Human Rights and Extraterritorial Obligations” (University of Pennsylvania Press).

Gibney, the Belk Distinguished Professor in UNC Asheville’s Political Science Department, is the chair-elect of the Human Rights Section of the International Studies Association, is a past president of the Human Rights Section of the APSA, and was the 2006 winner of the Human Rights Coalition of North Carolina’s International Human Rights Award.

A former practicing attorney, Gibney has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Villanova University, and a bachelor’s degree from Boston College.