Columbia Human Rights News

Recent ISHR Visiting Scholar D’Ann Penner published “Assault Rifles, Separated Families, and Murder in Their Eyes: Unasked Questions after Hurricane Katrina” in the latest issue of the Journal of American Studies.

Abstract:

This essay critiques the trauma literature that includes African Americans who endured Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. It is concerned with possible dissonance between scholars’ and subjects’ agendas. Drawing on narratives from the the Saddest Days Oral History Project that Penner directed in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, she explores divergences between the most urgent traumatic concerns of her study’s narrators and the dominant questions of Katrina mental health literature. Her focus is the survivors’ perceptions of rescuers’ intentions, a primary consideration in the assessment of potentially traumatizing events. The mental-health specialists, with minor exceptions, correctly predicted an overall surge in traumatic and depressive symptoms for Hurricane Katrina survivors. They were less effective in identifying causation, specifying type, and appreciating major differences between social groups and communities. For almost all of the African American narrators trapped in the city after the storm, the trauma of Katrina was experienced as the product of human beings, mainly armed law enforcement personnel and soldiers, brandishing assault rifles, acting disdainfully, and separating families. The event was made cataclysmic not by the winds or the floodwaters but by their descent into a militarized zone in which narrators seemed singled out for persecution because of their race/ethnicity (and gender). The traumatizing events that were omitted from the structured interview protocols, in particular the impact of the militarized response, have had the deepest impact on  survivors’ identity and ability to trust others.

From Columbia computers or with login access, the article is available from the Journal of American Studies webpage.  Others can look for Journal of American Studies, 44 (2010), 3, 573–599.

Also…

Read a review of Dr. Penner’s most recent book, Overcoming Katrina, at the Huffington Post.

The Dart Society, which is affiliated with Columbia’s Dart Center, is publishing an article by Dr. Penner, “Post-Katrina Trauma and Journalists,” in three parts.

ISHR is hiring a Prorgam Coordinator and an Assistant Director for Education.  Please visit http://hrcolumbia.org/about/hiring.htm for more information.

Physicians for Social Justice (PSJ), a community development organization founded by 2006 Advocate Chukwumuanya Igboekwu will receive the Red Ribbon Award for outstanding leadership in defending the right of people living with HIV/AIDS in rural Nigeria at the XVIII International AIDS Conference taking place from July 17 to the 23 in Vienna, Austria.

ISHR has just released its HRAP Alumni Profiles. See where the HRAP graduates are today and how their participation in HRAP has helped them along by going to: Alumni Profiles.

Are you an HRAP graduate who would like to be featured in the Alumni Profiles? Please contact Director Stephanie Grepo for more information by sending an email to: sg2670@columbia.edu.

This week, Time Magazine has published a feature article on 1996 Advocate Twesigye Jackson Kaguri and his work at the Nyaka AIDS Orphans School in Uganda. Read the article.

Kaguri is also releasing a book this Thursday, entitled The Price of Stones – Building a School for my Village. To learn more about the book, visit http://www.thepriceofstones.com/.

Pushing the Elephant, Arts Engine's latest Big Mouth documentary film, will premiere at Human Rights Watch Film Festival at New York's Lincoln Center. There will be three screenings the Walter Reade Theater:

• Saturday, June 12 at 1:45 p.m.
• Sunday, June 13 at 4:30 p.m.
• Monday, June 14 at 4 p.m.

Q & A with filmmakers and film subject Rose Mapendo will follow each screening.  Tickets and festival information are available at http://www.hrw.org/en/iff/pushing-elephant.

Pushing the Elephant's is directed by Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel, who received her Masters in International Affairs with a concentration in Economic and Political Development from SIPA in 1998.

Video of the talk (in French) is available from the Institut Émilie du Châtelet

In May 2010, Foreign Policy magazine named 1989 Advocate Hina Jilani as one of the world’s top dissidents. The magazine reports: “Jilani and her sister Asma Jahangir have been warriors for human rights in Pakistan since the 1980s when they were arrested for protesting gender-discriminatory legislation. Jilani, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, has warned that a return to military rule could start a process of Balkanization in Pakistan. During her career, she has held numerous positions with international organizations and served as the U.N. secretary-general's special representative on the situation of human rights defenders from 2000 to 2008.”

2002 Advocate Petar Antic recently became the Deputy Minister of Human and Minority Rights in the Republic of Serbia. He was previously the Executive Director of the Minority Rights Center.

On May 6-7, 2010, in Istanbul, Turkey, ISHR co-sponsored Choreography of Sacred Space: State, Religion and Conflict Resolution, an international conference in partnership with Boğaziçi University, Istanbul and Columbia University’s The Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion (CDTR), Institute for Religion, and Culture and Public Life (IRCPL).

View Program | Bios of invitees

Ladi Alabi reports that she recently signed a contract with UNICEF Nigeria and is now working in the Kaduna Field Office as a child protection specialist.

NEW YORK, April 19, 2010 - Columbia University Libraries' Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research (CHRDR) will house the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Archive—a comprehensive collection of documents representing 29 years of the organization’s research, reporting, and activism in support of the international press freedom movement.

"The Committee to Protect Journalists serves an immensely important role for the profession, and we are honored that Columbia University Libraries will house their archives," said Nicholas Lemann, Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism at Columbia University.

The Committee to Protect Journalists joins Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the Committee of Concerned Scientists, and Human Rights First in recognizing the CHRDR as an international documentation center for the global human rights movement. The CHRDR supports Columbia’s human rights programs, many of which draw on its resources for teaching and research, as well as the international community of human rights scholars, students, policy-makers and advocates.

Scholars at Risk (SAR) is gravely concerned for Emadeddin Baghi, a scholar, journalist and recent recipient of the prestigious Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders currently held in Evin Prison. SAR asks for letters, faxes and emails urging authorities to inquire into the matter and to urge the appropriate authorities to intervene to ensure his well-being pending his earliest release, including ensuring immediate and regular access to legal counsel of his choosing, to family and to any necessary medical treatment.

Scholars at Risk is an international network of over 220 universities and colleges in 29 countries dedicated to promoting academic freedom and its constituent freedoms of thought, opinion, expression, association and travel. In cases like Mr. Baghi’s involving alleged infringement of these freedoms, Scholars at Risk investigates hoping to clarify and resolve matters favorably.

According to reports, Mr. Baghi was arrested at his home on December 28th 2009. He was detained without charge and taken to an undisclosed location. Since then, he has reportedly been held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison, without access to his lawyers or medical care. Reports also indicate that Mr. Baghi has not been permitted regular visits with his family; indeed SAR understands that Mr. Baghi’s wife was able to see him for the first time only recently. All of this suggests apparent disregard of international standards of due process, fair trial and detention, as guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is signatory. Most alarmingly, SAR is concerned about recent reports that Mr. Baghi was hospitalized on March 20th after losing consciousness as a result of a respiratory condition worsened by his detention. SAR understands that Mr. Baghi has suffered from respiratory and heart conditions in the past, including three seizures and a heart attack prior to this imprisonment. In light of this, his prolonged detention without access to counsel, family or adequate medical support would appear to constitute a reckless disregard of his health and well-being.

The Open Society Institute recently named 2007 Advocate Zachary Norris one of 18 2010 Soros Justice Fellows. Norris is the Field Director of the Books Not Bars campaign. Based out of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California, Books Not Bars is a nationally-known effort to redirect California's resources away from youth incarceration and towards youth opportunities. The 18 Soros Justice Fellows will receive a stipend of $45,000 to $108,750 for each of 17 projects lasting 12-18 months. Since 1997, OSI has awarded more than $15 million to Soros Justice Fellows as part of a broader effort to curb mass incarceration and ensure a fair and equitable system of justice in the United States.

2008 Advocate Peter Mulbah, the Executive Director of the Skills and Agricultural Development Services in Liberia, was recently named a 2010 Kinship Conservation Fellow. The Fellows are typically mid-career field practitioners with an interest in market-based conservation principles. As one of the 18 Kinship Fellows, Peter will engage in seminars and mentoring sessions with elite faculty, participate in working groups with peers, and advance his commitment to conservation by developing a project of importance to his work. The Program will take place in the state of Washington from late June to late July.