Luke Hansen, S.J., joined America as an associate editor in August 2012 after serving for two years as volunteer coordinator at Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A native of Kaukauna, Wis., Luke graduated from Saint Joseph College (Ind.) and served for one year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in San Jose, Calif., as a legal advocate for mental health clients. He entered the Society of Jesus in 2005 and later earned a master’s degree in social philosophy from Loyola University Chicago. His thesis critiqued the use of indefinite detention in the “war on terror” from a Catholic perspective.
Luke won awards from the Catholic Press Association in 2011 for his America interview with former Guantánamo prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel J. Vandeveld and his feature story in Jesuit Journeys about visiting with four Uighur men who had been imprisoned in Guantánamo. In October 2012 Luke traveled to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to report on the military commission hearings for America.