Robert E. Williams Jr.

Robert E. Williams Jr. teaches international relations at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. His research and writing, which covers a broad range of issues in the discipline including international security and arms control, human rights, international law, and just war theory, has been published in Human Rights Quarterly, International Studies Perspectives, Global Society, and the Journal of Church and State.

Williams is currently working on a book about Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich kleptocracy in West Africa whose ruler, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, became Africa's longest-surviving dictator when Muammar Gaddafi died last year. The topic suggested itself about six years ago when Obiang's son and heir apparent purchased a $30 million estate in Malibu. The U.S. Department of Justice has recently seized the estate--along with a number of sports cars and roughly $2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia--claiming they are productions of corruption. French officials have recently been involved in a similar effort to seize the Obiang family's biens mal acquis.