Professional Affiliation

Rutgers University

Expert Bio

Expertise:
Organized Crime
Citizen Security
Conflict Resolution
Colombia

Aldo Civico is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ. He is the founder and director of the International Institute for Peace, which, operates under the auspices of UNESCO. Aldo’s scholarship examines the relationship between politics and violence and the influence of organized crime on the cultural, social, economic and political life of society, which causes him to do fieldwork in oftentimes highly volatile locations like Colombia and Mexico. In Sicily, Aldo was active in an anti-mafia social movement, and he has been an advisor to the mayor of Palermo Leoluca Orlando. He has worked on peace-building in Colombia since 2001 and has facilitated cease-fire negotiations between the government of Colombia and the ELN between 2005 and 2008. Aldo has a Master of Arts from the University of Bologna as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.  He is a blogger on The Huffington Post and a regular columnist for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador.  Most recently he contributed a chapter, “Eluding Peace? Negotiating with Colombia's ELN,” to the book, Engaging Extremists: Trade-Offs, Timing, and Diplomacy (edited by I. William Zartman and Guy Olivier Faure, USIP Press Books, June 2011).