Cl Councilassroom From the to the
Ambassador Jihoon Cha’s Path from AUWCL to the United Nations BY KEITH PIERCE AND BRICE HELMS
When Jihoon Cha, LL.M. ’01, arrived at American University Washington College of Law, he carried with him a law degree from Korea and a conviction that something was missing from his understanding of human rights. Two decades later, he arrived at AUWCL’s Tenley campus, this time as South Korea’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, stopping in Washington to visit the dean who had shaped his worldview.
Before enrolling at AUWCL, Cha attended the Human Rights Advocates Training program at Columbia University in New York City, an experience that opened his eyes to the breadth of human rights frameworks and advocacy traditions around the world. He knew he needed to learn more.
“WCL was one of the big schools regarding international human rights,” Cha recalled. “So, I came here.” That decision would prove formative.
A UNIVERSAL PERSPECTIVE At AUWCL, Cha found an intellectual environment that matched his ambitions. He studied under professors Claudia Martin and Diego Rodríguez-Pinzón and took courses from then-Dean Claudio Grossman, whose teaching on international human rights leſt a lasting impression.
“I never forgot his lectures and the classes he provided for the students,” Cha said. The curriculum pushed him beyond the domestic legal framework he had trained in and gave him what
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he described as a “more comprehensive, universal perspective” on human rights, one that would prove indispensable in the multilateral field.
Dean Emeritus Grossman did not mince words about his former student. “He was one of the top students here, and we're very honored that he’s an alum,” Grossman said. “He’s an example of what you can achieve through commitment and dedication.”
A DIPLOMATIC DIRECTION Aſter completing his LL.M., Cha returned to Korea and built a distinguished legal and diplomatic career. His trajectory eventually brought him to New York and the United Nations, where he now serves as South Korea’s Permanent Representative, navigating some of the most complex security challenges of the current moment. During his tenure on the Security Council last year, his portfolio included crises in Africa, Afghanistan, and Myanmar, and he has made a central priority of the question that haunts the Council: how to respond more effectively to armed conflict in an era of geopolitical gridlock.
His legal background, he says, remains relevant even in an environment where the rules are far murkier than in a courtroom. “Diplomacy is a little bit different from the practicing law perspective,” he explained. “Lawyers want to have a more clear division of what would be right or wrong, but diplomacy is a little bit deeper. We have to be based on value. Sometimes we have to compromise in the sort of gray areas.”
For Cha, the human rights concerns he first studied in the AUWCL classrooms have never receded from view. He remains attentive to labor rights, environmental rights, and the structural inequities that fuel instability. “When I came here to
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