Podcast appearances and mentions of Juan E Mendez

70 years after the establishment of the United Nations and the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are witnessing mounting human rights abuses in every corner of the globe. These abuses are piling up alongside what experts say is a pattern of global democratic retreat, forcing us to wonder if these two phenomena are linked together. Are democracy and human rights interdependent? And if so, how do we address a world where both are seemingly in decline? Debra Perlin speaks with Juan Mendez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, to answer these and other questions about the state of democracy around the world. ----------------- Join the Progressive Legal Movement Today: ACSLaw.org Today's Host: Debra Perlin, ACS Director of Policy and Program Guest: Juan Mendez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, American University - Washington College of Law Link: Universal Declaration of Human Rights Link: Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Link: Documentary Series Features Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Mendez: In His Own Words Visit the Podcast Website: Broken Law Podcast Email the Show: Podcast@ACSLaw.org Follow ACS on Social Media: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube ----------------- Production House: Flint Stone Media Copyright of American Constitution Society 2021.

On April 13, 2021 the Lannan Center presented a Crowdcast webinar featuring  Carolyn Forché. Moderated by Penn Szittya of the Lannan Foundation.Carolyn Forché's first volume of poetry, Gathering the Tribes, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, was followed by The Country Between Us, The Angel of History, and Blue Hour. In March, 2020, Penguin Press published her fifth collection of poems, In the Lateness of the World. She is also the author of the memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Press, 2019), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Juan E. Mendez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. She has translated Mahmoud Darwish, Claribel Alegria, and Robert Desnos. Her international anthology, Against Forgetting, has been praised by Nelson Mandela as “itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice.” In 1998 in Stockholm, she received the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award for her human rights advocacy and the preservation of memory and culture. She is one of the first poets to receive the Wyndham Campbell Prize from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and recently received a Lannan Award for Poetry. She is a University Professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.Penn Szittya is the former Chair of the English Department at Georgetown University, where he specialized in medieval poetics and social practice. He also taught at Emory, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and Boston University. He helped launch the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Music: Quantum Jazz — "Orbiting A Distant Planet" — Provided by Jamendo.

Listen NowOn any given day US prisons and jails hold between 80,000 and 120,000 men, women and children in solitary confinement.   A significant percent of these individuals enter solitary with a mental disease and a similar percent of those held in isolation for extended periods of time develop severe psychiatric illnesses that include self amputation and suicidality.  (US prisons and jails constitute the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country.)  The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment and Punishment, Juan E. Mendez, has concluded solitary confinement for more than 15 days constitutes torture.  In Hell is a Very Small Place, Voices from Solitary Confinement," edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway and Sarah Shourd, 16 former and current solitary confinement inmates discuss their experience in solitary and  two physicians and three professors (in law, political science and philosophy) discuss its physical and psychological effects and legal justification. During this 32 minute conversation, Ms Casella provides an overview of Hell Is a Very Small Place.  She explains why inmates are placed in solitary confinement, for how long and describes conditions under confinement.  She provides an overview of the psychological effects of solitary noted by contributing authors Dr. Stuart Grassian and Dr. Terry Kupers.  She addresses whether solitary confinement constitutes torture, explains how inmates attempt to keep their sanity, explains to what extent private sector profit making contributes to the practice and discusses what continued progress, if any, may be made under a new, incoming administration. Ms. Jean Casella is co-director of Solitary Watch, a web-based watchdog project that investigates, documents, and disseminated information about solitary confinement in US prisons and jails.  Prior to co-founding Solitary Watch in 2009, Ms. Casella managed several mission-driven book and magazine publishers including Thunder's Mouth Press and the Feminist Press.  Jean's writing has appeared in The Nation, Mother Jones, The Guardian, Al Jazerra, and other publications and media outlets.  The Hell is a Very Small Place anthology edited was published by The New Press in February.  For her work on solitary confinement, Jean was awarded a Soros Media Fellowship in 2012. For more information concerning Hell Is a Very Small Place go to: http://thenewpress.com/books/hell-very-small-place.The UN Special Rapporteur's report is at: http://solitaryconfinement.org/uploads/SpecRapTortureAug2011.pdf. For another physician's review of solitary confinement, see, for example, Dr. Atul Gawande's essay titled,"Hellhole," in the March 30, 2009 issue of The New Yorker.  At: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/30/hellhole.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to digicomm@uchicago.edu. Argentinean advocate Juan E. Mendez has devoted his career to the defense of human rights throughout the Americas. His work onbehalf of political prisoners of Argentina's military dictatorship in the 1970s resulted in his torture and administrative detention forover a year, during which time Amnesty International adopted him as a "Prisoner of Conscience."After his release in the late 1970s, Mr. Mendez helped found Human Rights Watch, becoming the organization's general counsel in1994. Mr. Mendez was the Executive Director of the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (1996-99) and Professorand Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (1999-2004). He was Argentina'srepresentative on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States from 2000-2003,serving both as Special Rapporteur on Migrants and as President. In July 2004, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan appointedhim as a Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. He currently serves as the President of the International Center onTransitional Justice.