About

Len Rubenstein has spent his career, spanning four decades, devoted to health and human rights. A graduate of Harvard Law School he is now Professor of the Practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Director of the Program in Human Rights, Health and Conflict at its Center for Public Health and Human Rights. At Johns Hopkins, he is also a core faculty member of the Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Center for Humanitarian Health.

Before coming to Johns Hopkins led two human and civil rights organizations, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and Physicians for Human Rights.  Len’s work has included rights of people with mental disabilities, gender rights, protections of people who are imprisoned or detained from torture and cruel treatment, as well as the subject of his book, protection of health care in conflict.

He has focused additionally on questions of ethics and human rights, from experimentation on psychiatric patients by the CIA to participation of health professionals in torture, to ethical challenges health practitioners face in war.  His investigations and research on the problem of violence against health care brought him to Africa, East and Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and he has published human rights reports, peer-reviewed studies, commentaries and op-eds.

In 2011, he founded and chairs the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a group of 40 humanitarian, human rights, health provider organizations working at the global and national levels, that seeks to reduce attacks on and interference with health workers, patients, facilities and transports.  He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Congressional Minority Caucuses’ Healthcare Hero Award and the Sidel-Levy Award for Peace of the American Public Health Association. He has appeared before Congress, the World Health Assembly and the UN Security Council.

@lenrubenstein