USD Magazine Spring 2009

AROUND THE PARK

BECOMING THE SOLUTION The IPJ’s Dustin Sharp is invested in shining a bright light on human rights [ a c t i v i s t ]

W all Street came calling after Dustin Sharp earned his law degree from Harvard in 2002. When you’re $90,000 in debt for your education, an astronomical entry-level salary is tempting. But Sharp had already worked in Washington, D.C. and Paris for a financial firm the year before, and he knew what that paycheck would truly cost. While living the “luxe” life was “a lovely experience,” it simply wasn’t his style. The bicycle he now rides to work rests against one wall of his small office at USD’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice; he joined the institute last September. Sharp wears a white shirt, comfortable chinos and black oxfords. “I looked around and thought about who I wanted to look like in 20 or 30 years,” he says. The result of that reflection was to turn his back on what some would perceive as the good life. So, instead of building a career around conspicuous consump- tion — during those Wall Street days, he enjoyed upscale restau- rants, four-star hotels and fine wine — Sharp decided to use his law degree to stand up for victims of atrocities in regions around the world. On the way to USD, he gained firsthand knowledge of interna- tional crimes and injustices: with the Peace Corps from 1996 to 1998, as a U.S. State Department official from 2003 to 2005, and as by Dirk Sutro

TIM MANTOANI

Investigating massacres, rapes, kidnappings, torture and other horrors, Sharp often placed himself at great personal risk. Conducting interviews with victims in modest hotel rooms, he worked below the radar of gov- ernment, military and local insur- gents, and used these interviews to write reports about violence involving hundreds or thousands of citizens in places like Guinea

an investigator with Human Rights Watch from 2006 to 2008. As one of dozens of State Department attorneys pushing for rigorous respect for the United States’ international legal obligations, Sharp was frustrated when these obligations were at times ignored by others within the administration. While he and his peers advocated for policy consistent with international

human rights law, the Bush administration used “tricks of language and sleights of hand” to follow its own course. “They didn’t fool anyone, most of all us,” Sharp says. “It was a difficult time to be there.” When he began working for Human Rights Watch in early 2006, Sharp left the formal gov- ernment life and plunged straight into the bloody heart of violence.

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