Brooks is a commentator on politics and foreign policy. She served as a columnist and contributing editor for Foreign Policy and as a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Brooks authored the 2016 book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything[2] and the 2021 book Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, which is based on her five years as a reserve police officer in Washington, D.C.
At Georgetown Law, Brooks founded the Center for Innovations in Community Safety, formerly the Innovative Policing Program, which in 2017 launched the Police for Tomorrow Fellowship Program with Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department. She founded the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and the Transition Integrity Project. In 2021,[3] 2022[4] and 2023,[5]Washingtonian magazine listed Brooks as one of Washington's "most influential people."
Early life and education
Rosa Brooks is the daughter of author Barbara Ehrenreich (née Alexander) and psychologist John Ehrenreich. Her parents separated when she was young and she also grew up with her stepparents, Gary Stevenson and Sharon McQuaide. She was named after Rosa Parks.[6] Her brother is journalist and author Ben Ehrenreich. Brooks was born in a public clinic in New York City. She attended elementary school in Syosset and briefly attended Syosset High School in Syosset, New York, but left early after two years to attend Harvard. In 1991, she earned a Bachelor of Arts (history and literature) from Harvard University.[7][8]
Brooks was a member of the Policy Committee of the National Security Network.[8] From 2001 to 2006, she was an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.[8] Brooks has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times (June 2005 to April 9, 2009)[9][10] and, since 2007, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.[8]
Brooks currently serves on the board of the Harper's Magazine Foundation, the Advisory Committee of National Security Action, the Steering Committee of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security and the board of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative.[11]
From 2016 to 2020, she was also a reserve police officer with the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and she received the Chief of Police Special Award in 2019.[12] She has also been active in Democratic presidential campaigns. She served most recently as a volunteer advisor on defense policy to the Biden campaign, and she is frequently consulted as an expert advisor on issues of national security, criminal justice, democracy and rule of law.[citation needed] In July 2024, after Biden's weak debate performance, she promoted a "blitz primary" alternative to fielding Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate.[13]
Writings
Brooks' scholarly work has focused mostly on national security, terrorism and rule of law issues, international law, human rights, law of war, failed states, and, more recently, criminal justice and policing. Along with Jane Stromseth and David Wippman, Brooks coauthored Can Might Make Rights? Building the Rule of Law After Military Interventions (2006).[14] Brooks is also the author of numerous scholarly articles published in law reviews.[15][16][17]
Brooks authored the 2016 book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything.[18] It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was selected by Military Times as one of the ten best books of the year. The book was also shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Arthur Ross Book Award.[19]
In 2021, she published Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City, which is about her experience as a reserve police officer in Washington, D.C.[20]Tangled Up in Blue was selected by the Washington Post as one of the best non-fiction books of 2021.
Brooks has two children.[1] Brooks was previously married to the Yale literary critic Peter Brooks,[1][25] and subsequently married LTC Joseph Mouer,[26] a now-retired Army Special Forces officer.
Works
Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the Nation's Capital, Penguin, 2021, ISBN9780525557852[12]
How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, Simon and Schuster, 2016, ISBN9781476777863[27]
A Garden of Paper Flowers: An American at Oxford, Picador, 1994, ISBN9780330327947 (under the name Rosa Ehrenreich; later articles are credited to Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks)
References
^ abcSherman, Scott. "Class Warrior". Scott Sherman. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Ehrenreich moved to Charlottesville in 2001 to be near her thirty-two-year-old daughter, Rosa, a law professor at the University of Virginia, and her granddaughter, Anna, now two. (She also has a son, Ben, who writes for L.A. Weekly.) When Ehrenreich is in town, she will often, in the late afternoon, get in her Honda Civic — which bears a "Proud to Be An American Against War" bumper sticker — and drive to Rosa's farmhouse on the outskirts of Charlottesville, a place Rosa shares with her husband, the Yale literary critic Peter Brooks, who is currently teaching at UVA.
^ abcdefghijBrooks, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks (2006). "About Rosa Brooks". Rosa Brooks. Archived from the original on February 21, 2007. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Rosa Brooks is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. (She is currently on leave from Georgetown to serve as Special Counsel at the Open Society Institute in New York).
^Brooks, Rosa (June 22, 2011). "Rosa Brooks". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 22, 2011. Retrieved April 17, 2021. This will be my last column for the L.A. Times. After four years, I'll soon be starting a stint at the Pentagon as an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy. (Rosa Brooks is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, Brooks taught at the University of Virginia and at Yale. She has also served as a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a board member of Amnesty International USA, a fellow of the Kennedy School of Government's Carr Center, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. Her government and NGO work has involved extensive travel and field research in countries ranging from Iraq and Kosovo to Indonesia and Sierra Leone.)
^ ab"Rosa Brooks". Georgetown Law. Archived from the original on January 27, 2021. Retrieved April 17, 2021. Associate Dean for Centers and Institutes; The Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law and Policy, Rosa Brooks teaches courses on international law, national security, constitutional law and criminal justice. She joined the Law Center faculty in 2007, after serving as an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. From 2016-2018, Brooks served at the Law Center's Associate Dean for Graduate Programs. Brooks is also an Adjunct Senior Scholar at West Point's Modern War Institute and a Senior Fellow at New America.
^Brooks, Rosa Ehrenreich (2006). "We the People's Executive". Rosa Brooks. Archived from the original on February 21, 2007. Retrieved April 17, 2021. 115 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 88
^Senior, Jennifer (August 1, 2016). "Review: 'How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything'". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved August 5, 2016. At its finest, "How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything" is a dynamic work of reportage, punctuated by savory details like this one. But Ms. Brooks has a larger ambition: She wants to explore exactly what happens to a society when the customary distinctions between war and peace melt away.