New Books in Human Rights

Over the last 20 years the world's most advanced militaries have invited a small number of military legal professionals into the heart of their targeting operations, spaces which had previously been exclusively for generals and commanders. These professionals, trained and hired to give legal advice on an array of military operations, have become known as war lawyers.In The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2021), Craig Jones examines the laws of war as applied by military lawyers to aerial targeting operations carried out by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Israel military in Gaza.This book shows just how important law and military lawyers have become in the conduct of contemporary warfare, and how it is understood.Craig Jones is a Lecturer in Political Geography in the School of Geography, Sociology and Politics at Newcastle University.Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants—and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren (Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa) spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland (University of North Carolina Press, 2021), she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production—and also, it turns out, of religion.Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected. This podcast will highlight the human right dimensions of the book and features a conversation between Nabhan-Warren and John McKerley, Curator of the Iowa Labor History Oral Project at the University of Iowa.This podcast was produced by the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the turn of the millennium, American media, scientists, and environmental activists have insisted that the global population crisis is “back”—and that the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is to ensure women’s universal access to contraception. Did the population problem ever disappear? What is bringing it back—and why now? In On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women's Rights in the Era of Climate Change (New York University Press, 2018), Jade S. Sasser explores how a small network of international development actors, including private donors, NGO program managers, scientists, and youth advocates, is bringing population back to the center of public environmental debate. While these narratives never disappeared, Sasser argues, histories of human rights abuses, racism, and a conservative backlash against abortion in the 1980s drove them underground—until now.Using interviews and case studies from a wide range of sites—from Silicon Valley foundation headquarters to youth advocacy trainings, the halls of Congress and an international climate change conference—Sasser demonstrates how population growth has been reframed as an urgent source of climate crisis and a unique opportunity to support women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights. ­Although well-intentioned—promoting positive action, women’s empowerment, and moral accountability to a global community—these groups also perpetuate the same myths about the sexuality and lack of virtue and control of women and the people of global south that have been debunked for decades. Unless the development community recognizes the pervasive repackaging of failed narratives, Sasser argues, true change and development progress will not be possible.On Infertile Ground presents a unique critique of international development that blends the study of feminism, environmentalism, and activism in a groundbreaking way. It will make any development professional take a second look at the ideals driving their work.Dr. Nicole Bourbonnais is an Associate Professor of International History and Politics and Co-Director of the Gender Centre at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her research explores reproductive politics and practice from a transnational historical perspective. More info here. witter: @iheid_history and @GC_IHEID Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How has “cybersecurity” become a catch-all for everything that touches our digital world? In his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East (Hurst, 2021), Dr. James Shires shows how myriad actors have exploited the prominent yet esoteric nature of the field, appropriating its symbolic power to serve their own interests. In the process, cybersecurity has grown to incorporate a series of seemingly distinct practices.An Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at the University of Leiden, Dr. Shires explores four discursive spaces where the language of cybersecurity permeates: cybersecurity as interstate digital conflict, cybersecurity as the protection of human rights, cybersecurity as domestic information control, and cybersecurity as the prevention of foreign interference. Through a close examination of each of these spaces within the Middle East, Dr. Shires deconstructs how various actors disguised value-laden arguments as technological imperatives—and how they reacted when they met resistance from skeptics. He concludes that politics, as much as the essentials of technology, often determines the scope and nature of cybersecurity.John Sakellariadis is a 2021-2022 Fulbright US Student Research Grantee. He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia and a bachelor’s degree in History & Literature from Harvard University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights: Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy (Cambridge UP, 2020) traces the role of human rights concerns in US foreign policy during the 1980s, focusing on the struggle among the Reagan administration and members of Congress. It demonstrates how congressional pressure led the administration to reconsider its approach to human rights and craft a conservative human rights policy centered on democracy promotion and anti-communism - a decision which would have profound implications for American attention to human rights. Based on extensive archival research and interviews, Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard combines a comprehensive overview of human rights in American foreign relations with in-depth case studies of how human rights shaped US foreign policy toward Soviet Jewry, South African apartheid, and Nicaragua. Tracing the motivations behind human rights activism, this book demonstrates how liberals, moderates, and conservatives selectively invoked human rights to further their agendas, ultimately contributing to the establishment of human rights as a core moral language in US foreign policy.Grant Golub is a PhD candidate in U.S. and international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research examines the politics of American grand strategy during World War II. Follow him on Twitter @ghgolub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Several months ago, Saskia Wieringa joined her co-authors Jess Melvin and Annie Pohlman on the show to talk about their edited volume The International People's Tribunal for 1965 and the Indonesian Genocide.  This time, Wieringa is on the show to talk about another co-edited volume.  Propaganda and the Genocide in Indonesia (Routledge, 2018) is a kind of companion volume to the first study. Wieringa and Katjusungkana focus here on the way in which propaganda set the stage for, encouraged participation in and offered explanations for the genocide. This campaign portrayed communists as enemies of the Indonesian nation. But more than that, the propaganda leveraged already existing political and gender stereotypes, presenting communists as atheists, hypersexualized and amoral. This propaganda was and remains widely accepted in Indonesia, enabling mass violence in the 1960s and political persecution in the decades since.But the book expands at time from its core focus on propaganda, shedding new light on the events of 30 September and, in particular, on the impacts of the violence on contemporary Indonesian society. Scholars and casual readers will find much of interest in the book. Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeffrey Bachman's edited volume Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations (Routledge, 2019) asks where the boundaries between genocide and other kinds of mass atrocity violence rest and what the stakes are in locating them here rather than there.Bachman, Senior Professorial Lecturer at the American University and a co-host of this podcast, has assembled a wide-ranging set of scholars to consider how and why the label 'cultural genocide' has been so contentious over the past decades. Bachman's own essay (co-written with Lauren Carasik) explains how and why the term was eliminated from early drafts of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Other essays range from theoretical examinations to contemporary case studies to inquiries about redress and reconciliation. Many highlight little known conflicts or disputes. Collectively, they will challenge the reader to reconsider earlier understandings of genocide and its causes and consequences.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amid a string of fall 2021 news reports about past-due exonerations and (white) self-defense that document the limits of racial justice within the U.S. legal system, Pain and Shock in America: Politics, Advocacy, and the Controversial Treatment of People with Disabilities (Brandeis University Press, 2021) becomes an even more relevant and timely book. Dr. Jan Nisbet, who authored the book with contributions from Nancy Weiss, introduces it succinctly: “The story is long, complicated, and filled with questions about society and its ability to care about, protect, and support the most vulnerable citizens. It is a story that calls into question the degree to which people who do not have disabilities can separate themselves from those who do, allowing painful interventions that they themselves would not likely tolerate” (2021, p. 8). If justice is central to evaluations of the social policies and public institutions charged with administering it, disability–as core issue theorized in philosophies of justice–must be centered as well (Putnam et al., 2019).To this end, Pain and Shock in America “intentionally highlights the hard-fought battles of disabled survivors like Jennifer Msumba and disabled-led advocacy organizations like the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network,” as “disabled self-advocates (who also happen to be lawyers)” (Nisbet 2021, p. vii-viii) Shain M. Neumeier and Lydia X.Z. Brown write in the Foreword––themselves appearing in the book as leaders with critical roles. The volume chronicles a nearly half-century saga involving the law, education, psychology, and medical fields as they converge in methods and culture of The Judge Rotenberg Center, a privately-run facility in Massachusetts which, despite six student deaths and consistent frequent citations for abuse and neglect, has been funded by taxpayers from about a dozen states and our nation’s capital as a placement for students with disabilities. Though its use of a self-made electric shock device makes the Judge Rotenberg Center unique in the country and perhaps the world, its institutional history provides a broader if extreme “lens through which we can understand the societal issues facing people with disabilities and their families” (Nisbet 2021, p. 10)Jan Nisbet is professor emeritus at the University of New Hampshire, where she served for ten years as the senior vice provost for research. Before assuming that position, she was the founding director of the Institute on Disability and professor in the Department of Education. She has been principal investigator on many state- and nationally-funded projects related to children and adults with disabilities.Nancy R. Weiss is a faculty member and the Director of the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities at the University of Delaware. She is the former Executive Director of TASH, an international advocacy association committed to the full inclusion of people with disabilities. She has more than forty years of experience in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities and has worked extensively providing community living and positive behavioral supports.Christina A. Bosch is an assistant professor of special education in the Literacy, Early, Bilingual and Special Education Department of the Kremen School of Education and Human Development at California State University Fresno; on Twitter as @DocCABosch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pink Revolutions: Globalization, Hindutva, and Queer Triangles in Contemporary India (Northwestern UP, 2021) describes how queer politics in India occupies an uneasy position between the forces of neoliberal globalization, on the one hand, and the nationalist Hindu fundamentalism that has emerged since the 1990s, on the other. While neoliberal forces use queerness to highlight India’s democratic credentials and stature within a globalized world, nationalist voices claim that queer movements in the country pose a threat to Indian national identity. Nishant Shahani argues that this tension implicates queer politics within messy entanglements and knotted ideological triangulations, geometries of power in which local understandings of “authentic” nationalism brush up against global agendas of multinational capital.Eschewing structures of absolute complicity or abject alterity, Pink Revolutions pays attention to the logics of triangulation in various contexts: gay tourism, university campus politics, diasporic cultural productions, and AIDS activism. The book articulates a framework through which queer politics can challenge rather than participate in neoliberal imperatives, an approach that will interest scholars engaged with queer studies and postcolonial scholarship, as well as activists and academics wrestling with global capitalism and right-wing regimes around the world.Shraddha Chatterjee is a doctoral candidate at York University, Toronto, and author of Queer Politics in India: Towards Sexual Subaltern Subjects (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I sat down with award winning author Tessa Bridal to talk about her latest book, The Dark Side of Memory: Uruguay's Disappeared Children and the Families Who Never Stopped Searching, published by Invisible Ink (October 2021). The Dark Side of Memory examines the largely unknown history of the state sponsored kidnapping of children in Uruguay and Argentina during the Cold War. For this book, Bridal interviewed parents, family members, and the children (now adults) for first person accounts detailing the circumstances of the kidnappings and the illegal adoption of newborns from the torture centers where they were born. Mothers and grandmothers, often involved in decades-long searches for their missing children and grandchildren, shared their determined and courageous confrontations with the kidnappers and with the governments and military forces that protected them.Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Florida International University. Her dissertation examines the cultural and intellectual politics surrounding black motherhood in twentieth-century Cuba. Twitter: @RozzmeryPV Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices