Dr. William Godnick

Dr. William ‘Bill’ Godnick joined the Perry Center as Professor of Practice in September 2016 after a career as Public Security Program Coordinator for the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean leading technical assistance programs on conventional arms control, nonproliferation, forensic ballistics, private security regulation and armed violence reduction strategies. Prior to that, Dr. Godnick worked as a Senior Policy Advisor for Latin America with the British organization International Alert. During that time, his efforts focused on supporting the Office of the Vice President of Colombia in building a coalition of government agencies, multinational and state-owned extractive industry and civil society for the implementation of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, a multi-stakeholder code of conduct guiding company and security forces operations in conflict zones..

Bill holds a BS in International Business from San Francisco State University (1992) and an MA in International Policy Studies from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (1997). In 2010, he completed his PhD from the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom. His doctoral dissertation was titled "An examination of the impact of voluntary weapons collection programs on citizen security in Latin America." Dr. Godnick is currently an adjunct professorial lecturer at the American University School of International Service and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in global and Latin American politics, in English and Spanish, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California State University Monterey Bay and Barry University in Miami, Florida.

Dr. Godnick currently leads the Perry Center's academic offerings in Human Rights and the Rule of Law and Caribbean Defense and Security and provides support to the Strategy and Defense Policy and the Countering Transnational Threat Networks courses. He has lived in the Bahamas, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru and worked in more than 20 countries in the Western Hemisphere. His current research focuses on the strategic use of social media in the defense and security sectors.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Godnick, William. "Armed Forces and Human Rights: Other Situations of Violence and Additional Consideration." in International Humanitarian Law 2021, ed. Philip Kaplan et al., 97-110. Washington, DC: Inter-American Defense College. 2021. Link
• Godnick, William. Review of "Understanding Mexico’s Security Conundrum" by Agustin Maciel-Padilla. Americas Quarterly, 25 May 2021. Link
• Godnick, William and David Guenni. "Social Media Use in the Venezuelan Defense and Security Sectors: Testing and Refining a Conceptual Framework." Occasional Paper. Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2020. Download (English) Download (Spanish)
• Godnick, William. Review of China's Strategic Partnerships in Latin America: Case Studies of China's Oil Diplomacy in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela 1991 - 2015 by Yanran Xu. PRISM 8, no. 1 (March 2019): pp. 143-145. Download
• Godnick, William, ed., Strategic Vision Initiative: Visualizing Security and Defense in the Western Hemisphere to 2030. Washington, DC: William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2018. Download
• Godnick, William. Review of Los Zetas Inc: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico by Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 7, no. 1 (February 2018): p. 2 Link