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Celebrating its 25-year annniversary, UC Berkeley’s Townsend Center for the Humanities is igniting free-ranging conversations among faculty and students, across multiple disciplines, that open new dimensions in academia, new ways to solve social problems, or simply serve to reinvigorate, to stretch human minds in new directions, says the center’s new director, Alan Tansman.
Tag: human rights
Berkeley professor to testify in trial of former Guatemalan dictator
April 4, 2013:
Professor Beatriz Manz has been called to testify as an expert eyewitness in the genocide trial of a former Guatemalan military dictator.
Helping to shape global response to wartime sexual violence
March 20, 2013:
Working with the Human Rights Center’s Sexual Violence and Accountability Project, Berkeley law students are aiding a multi-year effort to gather data on sexual and gender-based violence during and after war, across the globe, and to help craft better response policies.
Law clinic hails victory for Guatemalan civil-war victims
January 17, 2013:
In a ruling hailed as a victory for Guatemalan civil war victims, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has condemned Guatemala for its actions related to 28 forced disappearances in the 1980s. The International Human Rights Law Clinic at Berkeley Law litigated the case along with the Myrna Mack Foundation, a human-rights organization based in Guatemala City.
Law students play key role in Guatemalan human-rights case
May 7, 2012:
A recent, much-anticipated public hearing in Ecuador presented new, irrefutable evidence of state-sanctioned forced disappearances during Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. Students in Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic played a critical role in the case aired at the hearing.
Echoes of Mengele and Tuskegee, this time in Guatemala
March 18, 2011:
Medical historian Susan Reverby, who first revealed postwar U.S. government medical experiments on Guatemalan prisoners and mental patients, said the story “fits the trope of a grade-B horror move.” But she warned a Berkeley audience that it’s “too easy” to distance ourselves from those who conducted the research.
Law student’s book features former Liberian child soldiers
March 10, 2011:
“And Still Peace Did Not Come,” a book coauthored by Berkeley Law student Emily Holland ’12, reveals haunting personal recollections of Liberian child soldiers and their victims. A former TV producer and humanitarian journalist with experience in Africa, Holland specializes in international law and human rights and teaches street law to youth at a juvenile detention facility.
Survey highlights impact of war in northern Uganda
December 2, 2010:
Just a few years ago, nearly all northern Ugandans were living in displacement camps as the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized the countryside. A new survey of northern Ugandans, conducted by the Human Rights Center, offers a rare snapshot of the relative calm that now prevails in the area, but also highlights widespread fears that the peace is only temporary.
Law students help bring complaint against energy project in Mexico
December 2, 2010:
Two students at Berkeley Law’s International Human Rights Law Clinic played a substantial role in helping Mexican indigenous villagers file a human rights complaint against a U.S.-backed hydroelectric project in Oaxaca.
Students stage mock trial to engage in international law, human rights
December 2, 2010:
Students in the political science course “Accountability for International Human Rights Violations” reenact high-profile, international trials and act as prosecutors, defense and judges. In their most recent trial, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld faced charges of extradition to France to be tried there for violating international torture laws.
Anthropologist awarded grant to study politics of religious freedom
December 2, 2010:
The Henry R. Luce Initiative on Religion and International Affairs has awarded Saba Mahmood, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, a three-year, $496,000 grant to study how law and politics are transforming religious freedom.Mahmood’s “Politics of Religious Freedom” project will bring together key human rights and civil society organizations, along with jurists, policymakers and academics who have helped reshape the debate on religious freedom in the United States, the Middle East, South Asia and the European Union.
