Justice Matters

The human rights podcast Justice Matters returns this October with host Maggie Gates, Executive Director of the Carr Center, and a team of Harvard faculty members acting as rotating co-hosts, including Mathias Risse, Aminta Ossom, Rob Wilkinson, and Yanilda Gonzalez.

On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Dr. Leslie Alexander about the history of Black Internationalism and its ties to today's global Black Lives Matter movement. Her newest book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States, examines how the Haitian Revolution and the emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation inspired the birth of Black internationalist consciousness in the United States. Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. A specialist in early African American and African Diaspora history, she is the author of African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 and the co-editor of three additional volumes. A recipient of several prestigious fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship, Alexander is the immediate Past President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), and is an Executive Council member of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS).

Where do universal human rights begin? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Professor Martha Davis about local movements and human rights cities. Davis teaches constitutional law, US human rights advocacy, and professional responsibility at Northeastern Law School, where she is a Faculty Director for the Program for Human Rights and the Global Economy. A Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, she is also a member of the expert committee for HumanRight2Water, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that advocates for water and human rights. She is currently a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

What is critical race theory and why is it under attack? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman discusses critical race theory with Dr. Victor Ray, Carr Center Fellow and F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor at the University of Iowa. Together they explore the related topics of structural racism and intersectionality, and how race shapes social processes typically considered race neutral. Dr. Ray is also a Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. As a public scholar, he has published commentary in the Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Newsweek, and the Boston Review.

What is black witnessing, and how does it connect to movements for racial equity and justice? Can capturing a moment shape a movement? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Dr. Allissa Richardson about the power of communication on social and racial justice. Dr. Richardson is an Associate Professor of Journalism at USC Annenberg School. She researches how African Americans use social and mobile media to produce innovative forms of journalism, especially in times of crisis. She's the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism,” which explores the lives of 15 journalist activists who have documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter. Dr. Richardson is a Carr Center Fellow for the coming academic year.

What is the responsibility of business to uphold human rights? What is the role of civil society to hold business accountable? And how well is the human rights movement equipped to deal with the emerging challenges of the digital age? On this episode of Justice Matters, Host Sushma Raman talks with Mike Posner, Professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU, and director for the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU about these questions and other issues about human rights globally and in the United States. He served in the Obama administration from 2009-2013 as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor, and from 1978-2009 Posner led Human Rights First.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dara Kay Cohen, a Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research spans the field of international relations including: international security, civil war and the dynamics of violence, and gender and conflict. On this episode they discuss rape during contemporary civil wars, research methods for collecting qualitative data about sexual violence and the ethics of research, her findings about how gender equality could help to avoid civil war, and how documenting war crimes in Ukraine may lead to accountability after the war. Cohen explores these topics further in her award winning books, Rape During Civil War and Lynching and Local Justice: Legitimacy and Accountability in Weak States.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Yanilda María González, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School who researches police violence and how it relates to democracy and citizenship, with a focus on Latin America. In this conversation they discuss how to facilitate having dialogue around police reform with people from different backgrounds, authoritarianism and policing, civil society's role in holding politicians and police accountable, race and how policing determines how you have access to rights, and police corruption and how it relates to police violence in both the United States and Latin America.

How does a leader strive for social justice for their community and country? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women from 2013-2021, and the first woman to hold the position of Deputy President of South Africa. From her background as a teacher in South Africa and as an active part of the anti-aparteid struggle, through to her positions in the first democratically elected government of South Africa and later the UN, Dr. Mlambl-Ngcuka discusses her work fighting for the rights of women and children throughout her multifaceted career.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Sima Samar about the situation in Afghanistan, the status of women and girls in the country, and the role and responsibility of the international community. Dr. Samar is a member of the UN Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and has held the positions of Special Envoy for the President of Afghanistan, State Minister for Human Rights and International Affairs, Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commision, and Minister of Women's Affairs as one of only two women in the transition government. She is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a Scholar at Risk at Harvard.

For this month's episode of Justice Matters, we're digging into our archives to present a special episode for Black History Month. Featuring excerpts from three conversations with a range of speakers from academia and activism, our guests discuss the historical legacy of enslavement, the periods of progress followed by rollbacks, the promise and peril of the current moment, and how we build more inclusive and just societies for the future. Join our host Sushma Raman as she speaks with Wade Henderson, interim CEO of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, Dr. Keisha Blain, award-winning historian and author of “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Struggle for Global Freedom,” and Dr. Megan Ming Francis, author of “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State.”

How does the country's history affect the present — and how can we envision a more just future for everyone? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a noted historian and professor at Harvard Kennedy School, as they discuss the legacy of slavery; the intersection of racism, economic inequality, and criminal justice; and the importance of creating anti-racist institutions. Dr. Muhammad directs the Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Project at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School, is the former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture — a division of the NY Public Library and the world's leading library and archive of global Black history — and is the award-winning author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.

How do the values being built into AI affect our public and private lives now and into the future? What is the importance of a global human rights framework in driving discussions around the democratization of AI? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Annette Zimmermann, political philosopher at the University of York, and Technology and Human RIghts fellow at the Carr Center. They discuss many of the ideas in Dr. Zimmermann's forthcoming book, The Algorithmic is Political, where she argues that we should resist the view that AI is value neutral. In this conversation she lays out the scope and nature of algorithmic injustices, models for setting an agenda on regulating AI, and what it means to democratize AI in a climate rife with misinformation.

Human rights defenders are increasingly the targets of repression by states and private organizations. Join us this month on the Justice Matters podcast as host Sushma Raman talks with Nicholas Opiyo, Ugandan human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carr Center, about campaigning for civil rights and political freedoms in Uganda, and the clampdown on freedom of speech and freedom of press, as well as the rights of LGBTQ+ communities in the country.

How are new information technologies used in both civic engagement and social control in countries around the world? What do human rights have to do with the global information environment? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Phil Howard, Professor of Internet Studies at Oxford University and a Fellow at the Carr Center, about his research on how digital media impacts political life around the world.

How do democracies die? What lessons can we learn from the past as we seek to build more democratic societies and participatory public spheres? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University, Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and co-author with Daniel Ziblatt of the bestselling book “How Democracies Die”. They discuss the state of democracy in the world today, weak and informal institutions, and authoritarianism and how we can combat it.

How can we ensure accountability when international criminal law is violated? How do we approach seeking justice for past atrocities? And in an era of widespread disinformation, what happens when people lack trust in the very purveyors of justice? Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, former President of the ICC, joins host Sushma Raman to discuss accountability and justice in the global arena.

Can one movie make a difference in a nation's trajectory? Released in 1915, The Birth of a Nation was the first film to be screened in the White House. Mired in racists stereotypes, the film is credited with the resurgence of the KKK. In this month's episode of Justice Matters, Economist Desmond Ang joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the impact of media on racial hate.

How do science and technology affect rights, equity, and justice? When are techno-solutions inadequate in addressing societal problems? In this month's episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Professor Sheila Jasanoff, a pioneer in the social sciences exploring the role of science and technology in the law, politics, and policy of modern democracies. Join them as they discuss "technologies of humility," and how we might build more participatory methods of public policy problem solving.

President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Margaret Huang, joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the Center's tremendous growth, along with its challenges in the road ahead.

Regan Ralph, President and CEO for the Fund for Global Human Rights, joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the challenges, triumphs, and complexities of leading an international human rights organization.

Join host Sushma Raman and co-author William Schulz as they reflect on past, present, and future human rights frameworks, and discuss their latest book, "The Coming Good Society."

Wade Henderson, interim president of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund, joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the multigenerational and multiracial fight against systemic racism in the Unites States.

Joan Donovan–Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy—joins host Sushma Raman to discuss disinformation amidst the current political, public health, and human rights landscapes.

When should the law forgive? In this episode, Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor and former dean of Harvard Law School joins our host, Sushma Raman, to discuss the shortcomings of the current justice system in the U.S., and the importance of forgiveness as we think about reform.

Carr Center Faculty Director, Mathias Risse, joins host Sushma Raman in a discussion on distributive justice, political philosophy, and human rights.

Dr. Megan Ming Francis and host Sushma Raman discuss how—for better or worse— philanthropic organizations have historically influenced the human rights agenda on a national and global scale.

Dr. Keisha N. Blain joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the historic context of Black internationalist movements both domestically and around the world.

Alan Jenkins, Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School, joins host Sushma Raman to discuss the importance of communication as it intersects with matters of race, the law, and social justice.

Teaming up with the Radical Imaginations podcast, we're thrilled to host Angela Glover Blackwell on this episode of Justice Matters. Join Angela and host Sushma Raman as they discuss perhaps not-so-radical solutions to systemic racial and economic inequity.

Kerry Kennedy joins host Sushma Raman to discuss how her nonprofit organization is addressing some of the most pressing human rights concerns of our time. Between transforming agricultural labor laws to promoting freedom of the press, Kennedy discusses the amazing work of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.

Jonathan Ryan, CEO and President of RAICES (the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services), joins our host, Sushma Raman, to discuss the intersection of immigrants' rights, the weaponization of technology, and the private prison system.

Victor Madrigal-Borloz, UN Independent Expert on Protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, discusses the ramifications of systemic discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities.

In celebrating the 71st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, discusses the progress and challenges of the movement, both in her home country of Chile and around the world.

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, discusses gun violence and policy with Executive Director of the Carr Center, Sushma Raman.

North Korean defector, Joseph Kim, and Director of the Human Freedom Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, Lindsay Lloyd, share personal and policy-oriented accounts of circumstances in North Korea.

Matthew Smith – co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights, and Fellow at the Carr Center – discusses the Rohingya crisis, the importance of documentation, and the role of power in constructing narratives around human rights.

John Shattuck, Senior Fellow at the Carr Center and Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, discusses the evolution, threats, and impetus for renewing rights and responsibilities in the United States.

Mark Latonero – Carr Center Technology and Human Rights Fellow, and Research Lead for the Human Rights and AI on the Ground Initiatives at Data & Society – discusses ethics, privacy, and human rights implications around the use of artificial intelligence.

Timothy McCarthy — award-winning scholar, teacher, activist, and public servant — discusses the intersection of communication, power, and stories in the fight for human rights.

Nat Kretchun, Deputy Director of the Open Technology Fund, discusses the many ways in which technology both obstructs and empowers groups in North Korea.

Michael Abramowitz, President of Freedom House, discusses the growth and retreat of democracy around the globe. Before joining Freedom House in February 2017, he was director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education. He led the museum’s genocide prevention efforts and later oversaw its public education programs. He was previously National Editor and then White House correspondent for the Washington Post. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and former fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the Hoover Institution. A graduate of Harvard College, he is also a board member of the National Security Archive.

Desmond Patton, Professor at Columbia University Safe Lab and Public Interest Technologist, discusses the intersection of social media, ethics, and human rights.

Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, discusses how the organization addresses human rights violations, authoritarianism, and policy changes from the local to global level.

Luís Roberto Barroso, jurist and justice of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil, and Senior Fellow at the Carr Center, discusses the intersection of human rights and corruption in Brazil.

Vivek Krishnamurthy, Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Counsel in the Boston office of Foley Hoag LLP and an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, discusses the complex challenges of the human rights movement in the face of emerging technology and artificial intelligence.

Erica Chenoweth, Ph.D., a Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, discusses the importance, evolution, and nuances of protests and social movements with Carr Center's Executive Director Sushma Raman.

Salil Shetty, former Secretary-General of Amnesty International, discusses the history and progress of the human rights movement, citizen engagement, and global leadership with Carr Center's Executive Director Sushma Raman.

In this episode of Justice Matters, Elisa Massimino, former CEO and Executive Director of Human Rights First, discusses immigration policy, refugee rights, and the continued impact of Guantanamo with Carr Center's Executive Director Sushma Raman. "Most Americans want to live up to our ideals of being a welcoming country…respecting human rights and human dignity for anyone who wants to come and work hard…Most people understand that this is good for the country...But we need to have political courage for this to happen."

Join us for this special episode of Justice Matters, produced in collaboration with Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast. In this episode, we interview Malachy Browne, Senior Story Producer at the New York Times. Malachy focuses on visual and open source investigations. About Malachy Browne: Malachy Browne is a senior story producer with The New York Times. He specializes in social journalism with a focus on international reporting and breaking news. https://www.nytimes.com/by/malachy-browne About Sushma Raman, Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights: https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/people/sushma-raman About Declarations Podcast: A show about human rights coming to you every week from the Cambridge Centre of Governance and Human Rights. Tune in each week as our panel explores the rights and wrongs of contemporary politics, joined by fascinating guests from the University of Cambridge and around the world. This episode features Declaration's Matthew Mahmoudi and Max Curtis. More:@DeclarationsPod, based out of @CGHR_Cambridge, @malachybrowne, @carrcenter

In the latest episode of Justice Matters, Carr Center Executive Director Sushma Raman talks with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha about refugees, war, persecution, the stateless, and immigration. But no human being is illegal. What are our obligations and duties towards migrants and refugees? How do we approach DACA given our political climate? And how do we lay this groundwork through a lens of human rights?