Father Richard Ryscavage S.J. is a Jesuit priest who will begin teaching this Fall semester a course on Global Child Migration (INAF 376). Most recently he was Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut where he taught international studies. He founded the Center for Faith and Public which looked at issues where religion and politics intersect. Fr. Ryscavage served as national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service/USA and was also national secretary for social and international work at the Jesuit national headquarters. For several years he was elected chair of humanitarian relief group of non-governmental organizations working internationally at the coalition INTERACTION in Washington DC. In that role he represented many different American NGOs at meetings in the State Department and at the United Nations in New York as well as at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland. From 1994-1998, he was a tutor and researcher at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, UK.

Before Oxford he worked as Executive Director of the Migration and Refugee Services of the US Catholic Bishops Conference where he ran one of the world’s largest refugee resettlement agencies. He was also President of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) providing a national network of immigration attorneys helping immigrants and asylum seekers. For the past several years he has taught a course on the ethics of economic development policies in the graduate economics and business school at the Catholic University of America. Fr. Ryscavage studied at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as well as at the School for International Training in Vermont. He also holds degrees in political philosophy from Boston College and Master of Divinity from Weston School of Theology in Cambridge Mass.