2008 Conference Break-Out Lunch Groups

1. International Criminal Prosecutions and Universal Human Rights Professor Alex Whiting will be looking deeper at Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law." How close have we come to this ideal in the area of accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide? On the one hand, the last fifteen years have seen a proliferation of war crimes tribunals building on the precedent of Nuremberg.  On the other hand, the principle of accountability for war crimes and mass atrocity is increasingly under attack and is subordinated to other interests, such as necessity in the war on terror and peace in warring regions in the world. Are we moving forward or backward in the quest for access to justice for war crimes?

Alex Whiting is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His research interests include international humanitarian law, procedures of international criminal tribunals, and prosecutorial ethics.  He served as Senior Trial Attorney at the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He received his BA from Yale University in 1986 and his J.D. from Yale University in 1990. From 1991-1995, he served as a trial attorney in the criminal section of civil rights division of the Department of Justice.

2. Bargaining with the Devil: The Challenge of Negotiating with Adversaries You See as Evil Using various examples-both historical and current-day, Robert Mnookin will explore the psychological and philosophical challenges faced by parties deciding whether and how to resolve conflicts with those they profoundly mistrust, and who have committed evil acts. Using examples connected to the themes of this conference, Mnookin will ask: When armed violence has ended, but your enemies have violated your human rights, should you pursue justice in formal proceedings or negotiate some sort of reconciliation process?

Robert H. Mnookin is the Samuel Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, the Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the Director of the Harvard Negotiation Research Project.  A leading scholar in the field of conflict resolution, Professor Mnookin has applied his interdisciplinary approach to negotiation and conflict resolution to a remarkable range of problems; both public and private.

3. The UDHR and the African American Struggle for Human Rights 1944-1955 Joshua Rubenstein will talk about how the United States, under the leadership of President Harry Truman and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, helped to draw up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was adopted by the United Nations just sixty years ago on December 10, 1948.  This document, which was among the founding documents of the UN, reflected a widely shared determination that promoting respect for human rights needed to be among the priorities of the United Nations along with preserving the peace following the devastation of World War II.  But when domestic civil rights organizations, like the NAACP and others, tried to use the UDHR and appeal to the United Nations as part of its campaigning against lynching, segregation, and other aspects of racial discrimination in the United States, they were met with hostility within the United States.  Pressures associated with the Cold War and determined efforts to sustain Jim Crow ensured that institutions within the United States would not be able to point to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or other international human rights conventions that were subsequently developed as a way to address ongoing violations in our own country.

Joshua Rubenstein is the Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA and Associate at Harvard's Davis Center for Eurasian and Russian Studies. He has been professionally involved with human rights and international affairs for 30 years as an activist, scholar and journalist with particular expertise in Soviet affairs. He is author of Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle for Human Rights (1980) and Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, a biography of the controversial Soviet writer and journalist. His book, Stalin's Secret Pogrom: the Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was awarded the National Jewish Book Award in 2001-2002. Mr. Rubenstein has also contributed articles and reviews on Russian and international affairs to many publications including The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe.

4. What Can the UN do in Response to Unlawful Killings around the World?  Professor Philip Alston will talk about how governments and their allies kill people unlawfully in many different contexts.  The police and the military are always in the front line, but so too are death squads, militia groups etc.  The UN Human Rights Council has appointed Mr. Alston to be a Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions and this talk will be about his experiences in countries such as Brazil, the Philippines and Afghanistan.

 Philip G. Alston is the John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University Law School and Director of the law school's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. He is also a prominent Australian human rights thinker. In the human rights area, Alston has been UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions since 2004 and in 2007-08 has undertaken official missions to the Philippines, Brazil, Central African Republic, Afghanistan and the United States.

5. Tackling Europe's Segregation through the European Human Rights System:  the Case of the Roma Professor Grainne de Burca will talk about the Roma people and how NGOs and others have in recent years begun to use the different parts of European human rights system (the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Social Charter, and more recently the European Union's anti-discrimination regime) to try to tackle some of the most egregious aspects of the deeply-rooted discrimination, marginalization and neglect of the Roma across Europe.
   

Grainne de Burca is a Professor of Law at Fordham University Law School. She was a Professor of European Union Law at the European University Institute. Prior to that she was a lecturer in law at Oxford University and fellow of Somerville College from 1990-1998. She has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Toronto, Michigan and Columbia. Her field of expertise is broadly in EU law, with particular focus on constitutional issues of European integration, EU human rights policy and European and transnational governance. She is co-director of the EUI's Academy of European Law and series co-editor of two OUP book series: Oxford Studies in European Law, and the Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law.

6. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Facing History staff Dan Eshet and Dimitry Anselme will explore a new resource developed for Facing History's teachers that examines Eleanor Roosevelt and the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The session will focus on the political climate after World War II, the negotiations and compromises that made the drafting of the document possible, and the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. Finally, the session will address the question, what legacies and challenges did the document leave for educators, lawyers, and activists who struggle to improve the lives of people around the world?

Dan Eshet works as a historian at Facing History and Ourselves, an international, nonprofit educational organization that develops teaching materials on racism, antisemitism and human rights. Dan received his B.A. and M.A. from Tel-Aviv University. In 1999, he received his Ph.D. in British history from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dimitry Anselme is the Program Director of Staff Development, Facing History and Ourselves.   Dimitry used to be the principal at the Academy of the Pacific Rim.  Prior to being a principal, Dimitry was a history high school teacher in Worcester and Brookline.

7. Teaching the Practice of Human Rights: Engaging Law Students Critically Professor James Cavallaro will talk about the tensions involved in trying to teach the practice of human rights in a critical yet committed way, trying to address how to inspire students to engage in human rights while maintaining a sense of distance and not becoming a cheerleader.   Professor Cavallaro will focus on concrete examples from his personal experience clinical teaching and oversight of clinical work at Harvard Law School.

James L. Cavallaro is a clinical professor of law and the Clinical Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. Prior to coming to Harvard in 2002, he spent nearly two decades working in human rights, founding and directing the Global Justice Center, a leading human rights organization in Brazil (1999-2002), serving as Brazil Office Director for Human Rights Watch (1994-1999), as Director of CEJIL/BRASIL (1994-1997), and with groups in Chile (1988-1990) and on the US-Mexico border (1985-1986). He is the author of several dozen books, reports and articles on human rights issues, including the Crime, Public Order and Human Rights (International Council on Human Rights Policy, Geneva, 2003), a five-country study of rising crime in urban centers and the challenges it presents for rights defense.

8. Religion, Multiculturalism, and Education In this session, Professor James Fraser and Professor Diane Moore will focus on the challenges and opportunities associated with creating a school community where the religious dimensions of multiculturalism are recognized, valued, and explored.  Using case studies, participants will learn how to enhance understanding about religion in both the curricular and cultural dimensions of school life while also addressing the ways that educators agree and disagree about the best approaches to addressing issues related to religion in a public and secular setting.
   

James Fraser is a Professor of Educational History at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. His most recent book is Preparing America's Teachers: A History (Teachers College Press, 2007). Earlier works include A History of Hope: When Americans Have Dared to Dream of a Better Future (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002), Between Church and State: Religion & Public Education in a Multicultural America (Palgrave-Macmillan, 1999), and Reading, Writing, and Justice: School Reform As If Democracy Matters (State University of New York Press, 1997) as well as many articles in academic publications. At NYU Steinhardt School of Education Fraser teaches courses in the history of education and Inquiries into Teaching and Learning and is engaged with the partnership with the New York City public schools. Prior to coming to NYU he was Professor of History and Education and founding dean of the School of Education at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also on Facing History's Board of Scholars.

Diane Moore is a professor of the Practice in Religious Studies and Education and Director of the Program in Religion and Secondary Education at the Harvard Divinity School. Dr. Moore pursues research interests in religion, democracy, and public education with a special emphasis on the intersections of critical theory and teaching about religion in the schools from a multicultural perspective. She is also interested in the relationship among the arts, education, and social change. She is the director of the Program in Religious Studies and Education and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Religion and Education and the British Journal of Religious Education.

9. The Spectacle of Torture:  the Use of Video Representation of Torture for Advocacy and Pedagogy After the release of images from Abu Ghraib and dawn of the "Age of YouTube," images of suffering have gained a new cultural salience.  How do we utilize these images as educators and as advocates?  Rebecca Richman Cohen will share two examples:  first, a video of the 1991 Rodney King beating and its failure to convince a state court jury of police brutality-and second, a contemporary documentary that features images from Abu Ghraib.   Participants will evaluate the use of video in two very different campaigns with regard to the emotional, theoretical and political impact. How has the representation of torture affected public recognition of rights and wrongs?

Rebecca Richman Cohen is a filmmaker, teacher, and human rights advocate with experience in criminal defense and transitional justice.  Rebecca founded Racing Horse Productions; an independent film production company dedicated to human rights documentary films.  She is a lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching an undergraduate seminar entitled "Human Rights, Mass Atrocity, and Documentary Film."  Currently, she is producing a feature-length documentary about the trial of a rebel leader in West Africa.  Rebecca is an alumna of Brown University and Harvard Law School.

10. The Changing Nature of Wars and the Changing Nature of Laws Professor Gabriella Blum will talk about the change in the strategic security environment we live in and the values that guide us in operating within it.

Gabriella Blum is an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Her research interests include conflict management, counter-terrorism operations, laws of armed conflict, negotiation, and public international law. She received: a LL.B. from Tel-Aviv University in 1995, a BA from Tel-Aviv University in 1996 in economics, a LL.M. from Harvard Law School in 2001, and a S.J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2003.  Her latest publications is "Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and the Architecture of International Law," 49 Harvard International Law Journal 323 (2008).  Her latest book is Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries (Harvard University Press 2007).