New Books in Human Rights

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, Samantha Power describes how Hannah Arendt influenced her thinking about politics and human rights. Power spoke during a two day symposium-- “Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth.Samantha Power was Barack Obama’s human rights adviser, and then served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. She is the author of several books, including A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which won the 2003 Pulitzer prize. She is a professor of practice at Harvard’s Law School and Kennedy School.In the second half of the episode, Azar Nafisi responds to Power. Nafisi is best known for her 2003 book, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why did some sectors of the Rwandan churches adopt an ambiguous attitude towards the genocide against the Tutsi which claimed the lives of around 800,000 people in three months between April and July 1994? What prevented the churches' acceptance that they may have had some responsibility? And how should we account for the efforts made by other sectors of the churches to remember and commemorate the genocide and rebuild pastoral programmes? Drawing on interviews with genocide survivors, Rwandans in exile, missionaries and government officials, as well as Church archives and other sources, this book is the first academic study on Christianity and the genocide against the Tutsi to explore these contentious questions in depth, and reveals more internal diversity within the Christian churches than is often assumed. While some Christians, Protestant as well as Catholic, took risks to shelter Tutsi people, others uncritically embraced the interim government's view that the Tutsi were enemies of the people and some, even priests and pastors, assisted the killers. The church leaders only condemned the war: they never actually denounced the genocide against the Tutsi. In The Genocide Against the Tutsi, and the Rwandan Churches: Between Grief and Denial (James Currey, 2022), Denis examines in detail the responses of two churches, the Catholic Church, the biggest and the most complex, and the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, which made an unconditional confession of guilt in December 1996. A case study is devoted to the Catholic parish La Crête Congo-Nil in western Rwanda, led at the time by the French priest Gabriel Maindron, a man whom genocide survivors accuse of having failed publicly to oppose the genocide and of having close links with the authorities and some of the perpetrators. By 1997, the defensive attitude adopted by many Catholics had started to change. The Extraordinary Synod on Ethnocentricity in 1999-2000 was a milestone. Yet, especially in the immediate aftermath of the genocide, tension and suspicion persist.Allison Isidore is the Assistant Director for the American Catholic Historical Association. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism, and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. Allison is also a Video Editor for The Religious Studies Project, producing videos for the podcast and marketing team. She tweets from @AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In times of heightened national security, scholars and activists from the communities under suspicion often attempt to alert the public to the more complex stories behind the headlines. But when they raise questions about the government, military and police policy, these individuals are routinely shut down and accused of being terrorist sympathizers or apologists. In such environments, there is immense pressure to condemn what society at large fears. I Refuse to Condemn: Resisting Racism in Times of National Security (Manchester University Press, 2021) explains how the expectation to condemn has emerged, tracking it against the normalization of racism, and explores how writers manage to subvert expectations as part of their commitment to anti-racism. In my conversation with the collection’s editor, Asim Qureshi, Research Director of CAGE, an independent advocacy organization, we discuss the culture of condemnation and the presumption of guilt, its psychological and physiological impacts, issues of trauma, white supremacy and racism as a system of power, structural racism’s relationship to national security, Prevent and countering violent extremism programs, cultural representation, the role of artists and performers, the afterlife of one’s work or art, and advocacy to dismantle anti-Muslim racism.Kristian Petersen is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at Old Dominion University. You can find out more about his work on his website, follow him on Twitter @BabaKristian, or email him at kpeterse@odu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the Institute’s Vault, we have an excerpt from a two day symposium--“Hannah Arendt Right Now”--which explored the philosopher’s impact on the 21st Century. The 2006 event was held on the hundredth anniversary of Arendt’s birth.In this episode, Dr. Rony Brauman describes how Arendt influenced his thinking about the politics of humanitarian aid. Brauman was president of Doctors without Borders from 1982 to 1994. In 1999, he co-directed The Specialist - Portrait of a Modern Criminal, a documentary about the trial of Adolf Eichman. Samantha Power responds to Brauman’s presentation. Power was the US ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, and author of A Problem From Hell, America and the Age of Genocide, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hong Kong has always existed on the edge of empires, providing services and capabilities to powerful nations. And even to this day when the one country two systems idea is all but defunct, Beijing still needs Hong Kong to provide China with access to world markets – especially financial ones. But what next? Ho Fung Hung, Professor in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University and author of City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule (Cambridge UP, 2022) discusses the future of Hong Kong.Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Approximately half the population menstruates for a large portion of their lives, but the law is mostly silent about the topic. Until recently, most people would have said that periods are private matters not to be discussed in public. But the last few years have seen a new willingness among advocates and allies of all ages to speak openly about periods. Slowly around the globe, people are recognizing the basic fundamental human right to address menstruation in a safe and affordable way, free of stigma, shame, or barriers to access.In Menstruation Matters: Challenging the Law’s Silence on Periods (NYU Press, 2022), Dr. Bridget Crawford and Dr. Emily Gold Waldman explore the role of law in this movement. They ask what the law currently says about menstruation (spoiler alert: not much) and provides a roadmap for legal reform that can move society closer to a world where no one is held back or disadvantaged by menstruation. The book examines these issues in a wide range of contexts, from schools to workplaces to prisons to tax policies and more. Ultimately, they seek to transform both law and society so that menstruation is no longer an obstacle to full participation in all aspects of public and private life.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book, Promoting Justice Across Borders: The Ethics of Reform Intervention (Oxford UP, 2021) political scientist Lucia M. Rafanelli develops an ethical theory of global reform intervention, arguing that new theories are necessary as increasing global interconnection continues and expands around the world. Rafanelli classifies global reform intervention as any attempt to promote justice in a society other than one’s own. This loose definition means that there are several variations of these actions: the degree of control held by the interveners; how interveners interact with recipients; existing political institutions; the context surrounding the action, and the risks intervention poses to the recipients of that intervention. Promoting Justice Across Borders argues that there are components within these dimensions that pollute the moral permissibility of reform intervention. Once the malleability of these actions becomes evident, it also becomes clear that there are ethical ways to go about (and not go about) such an action. When studying examples of reform interventions, it is clear that there are some interveners who disrespect and essentially ignore the recipients and treat them with intolerance. But not all interveners treat recipients this way, many treat the recipients of intervention with respect for the legitimate political institutions, working to establish collective self-determination, thus providing a blueprint for moral action. It is through these particular examples that Rafanelli creates an ethical framework through which reform intervention is analyzed with the goal of global justice.Promoting Justice Across Borders combines philosophical analysis of justice and morality with a case-by-case investigation of real-life events, in an attempt to identify which kinds of reform intervention are not subject to ethical objection. The analysis redefines the ordinary boundaries of global politics with the values of toleration, legitimacy, and collective self-determination. Rafanelli explains how vital it is for interveners to avoid subjecting recipients to neocolonial power dynamics or making their institutions more responsive to the intervener’s interests at the expense of the recipient’s interests in order to maintain this framework of global collectivism. A qualification of reform intervention is not to undermine the self-determination of the recipients; in fact, it may bolster it and re-affirm the recipient’s independence in the name of justice. Promoting such justice, unfortunately, takes place in a non-ideal world, and Rafanelli discusses how these theories can be put into practice in this context. To prevent negative consequences from the most well-principled interventions, diverse global oversight of such actions is an important component of the process, as well as ensuring that interveners favor interventions where they exert less rather than more control over recipients. Priority must be given to interventions that challenge current and historical power hierarchies. Humanity’s collective purpose of pursuing justice can be reshaped and better applied according to the analysis in Promoting Justice Across Borders, but the approach and process needs to be reconfigured to avoid reinscribing past problematic applications of these reform interventions.Emma R. Handschke assisted in the production of this podcast.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why should we view the anti-China protests that began in Hong Kong in 2019 through a comparative lens? How do earlier episodes in Hong Kong’s history help us make sense of what has happened? How far can we make useful parallels with other protest movements in places like Thailand and Myanmar? And is a distinct field of ‘Hong Kong studies’ now beginning to emerge?In May 2022, Jeffrey Wasserstrom gave a keynote address entitled ‘The Struggle for Hong Kong: Comparisons Across Space and Time’, to the conference Unknown Futures: A Seminar on Hong Kong, held at the University of Copenhagen. Here, Jeff is in conversation about Hong Kong in comparative perspective with Duncan McCargo, director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and a professor of political science at the University of Copenhagen.Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Jeff’s books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China: The View from Shanghai (Stanford 1991), and most recently Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports, 2020), which examines the protests against Chinese rule that began in 2019.Enjoyed this podcast? You might also like this much-downloaded 2021 Nordic Asia Podcast episode, in which Wasana Wongsurawat and Mai Corlin Fredriksen discuss Popular Protests in the Age of #MilkTeaAlliance.The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, and Asianettverket at the University of Oslo.We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dkTranscripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is a recorded panel discussion on “War and Peace: America's Humane War and the Crisis in Ukraine.” The panel was part of the Annual Conference of the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium (HRRC) held on May 12, 2022 at the University of Connecticut in Hartford. The discussion considers the recent book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, written by Samuel Moyn, and its relevance to the current war in Ukraine. The event featured the author (Moyn), as well as Silja Voeneky, of the University of Freiburg, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and Frauke Lachenmann, of the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium. James Cavallaro, of the University Network for Human Rights, Yale Law School and Wesleyan University, was the moderator. The public address questions to the panelists in the second half of the event.Samuel Moyn is Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at Yale Law School and a Professor of History at Yale University.Prof. Dr. Silja Vöneky (Voeneky) is Co-Director of the Institute for Public Law, Professor of Public International Law, Comparative Law and Ethics of Law and an associated member of the Institute for Philosophy of Law. Since October 2019, she has served as the Vice Dean of the Freiburg Law Faculty.Frauke Lachenmann is an international lawyer and holds a PhD in English literature. She has worked for the UNHCR in Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for International Law and the Max Planck Foundation for the Rule of Law in Heidelberg and has been a Visiting Researcher at Yale.James (Jim) Cavallaro is the Executive Director of the University Network for Human Rights. He teaches at Wesleyan University, Yale Law School and UCLA Law School. Prior to co-founding the University Network, he served as a professor of law at Stanford Law School (2011-2019) and a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School (2002-2011).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The civil war in Yemen has going on since 2014. Noria al-Hussini, Communications Director of Mwatana for Human Rights, discusses the war and the numerous human right violations that have occurred and are occurring in it.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices