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Caleb Rossiter - Biographical Sketch
202-885-2460, 202-537-5104; calebrun@igc.org, rossiter@american.edu
Dr. Caleb Rossiter is a Washington-based professor and consultant in the area of national security policy. He is a professor at American University's School of International Service, and has served as an adviser on military alternatives to landmines, international treaties affecting landmines, and methods to reduce civilian casualties of war, particularly from cluster bombs, to the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.
From 1984 to 1990 Dr. Rossiter served as deputy director for foreign policy of the bipartisan Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus of the U.S. Congress; from 1992 to 1999 he was director of Demilitarization for Democracy, a research and advocacy center that opposed U.S. military assistance to repressive governments. DFD also promoted the broadening of the professional arms control community to include more people of color. In both positions, he wrote research reports on U.S. military and financial support for repressive regimes and promoted legislation restricting such support, with particular emphasis on El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Rossiter was one of the founder of both the "No Arms to Dictators" Code of Conduct movement and the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Dr. Rossiter earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Policy Analysis in 1983, with a dissertation on the diplomatic and developmental uses of U.S. foreign aid in Southern Africa during Zimbabwe's war of independence.
Dr. Rossiter is the author of two books: Development versus Diplomacy: The Bureaucratic Struggle for Control of U.S. Foreign Aid in Southern Africa, 1973-1981 (1985), and The Chimes of Freedom Flashing: A Personal History of the Vietnam Anti-war Movement and the 1960s (1996).
He has written dozens on reports on foreign and military policy, including: Barriers to Reform: A Profile of El Salvador's Military Leaders (1990); and Fighting Retreat: Military Political Power and Other Barriers to Africa's Democratic Transition (1997); Commander in Chief: Contrasting Presidential Roles in the World Campaigns to Ban Chemical Weapons and Landmines (1999); and Winning in Korea without Landmines (2000).
In 1998 Dr. Rossiter was the Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 31st congressional district.
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