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John Shattuck. 4/3/2017. “Hungary’s Attack on Academic Freedom”.Abstract

See the op-ed in The Boston Globe by Carr Senior Fellow John Shattuck.

An authoritarian nationalist regime in Hungary is threatening a renowned international university in Budapest. Legislation introduced last week by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban would fundamentally alter the legal status of Central European University and could force it to shut down or leave the country.

What’s going on in Hungary is not a local political dispute, but a frontal assault on liberal values essential to democracy and academic freedom.

Full Op-Ed here.



Pippa Norris. 2/27/2017. “What is a Populist?” The Atlantic . Publisher's VersionAbstract

The Atlantic features HKS's Pippa Norris, the Paul. F. McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics.

Why does Donald Trump exaggerate the size of his inauguration crowd, brag about his election win in conversations with world leaders, and claim without evidence that voter fraud may have cost him the popular vote? Why does he dismiss protesters who oppose him as “paid professionals” and polls that reflect poorly on him as “fake news”? Why does he call much of the media the “enemy of the people”?

There are explanations for these things that focus on the individual, characterizing Trump as a self-centered reality-TV star obsessed with approval and allergic to criticism.

But there is also an ideological explanation, and it involves a concept that gets mentioned a lot these days without much context or elaboration: populism.

Read the full article in The Atlantic.



Alberto Mora. 3/11/2017. “Trump’s Revised Travel Ban Is Denounced by 134 Foreign Policy Experts.” The New York Times .Abstract

Read the letter, which features Alberto Mora, published in The New York Times. 

WASHINGTON — More than 130 members of America’s foreign policy establishment denounced President Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday as just as damaging to the United States’ interests and reputation as his original order that halted refugees and froze travelers from predominantly Muslim countries.

In a letter to Mr. Trump, the former government officials and experts said even the scaled-back order will “weaken U.S. security and undermine U.S. global leadership.” And they said it continues to signal to Muslim allies that — as the Islamic State and other extremist propaganda profess — the United States is an enemy of Islam.

Read the full letter in The New York Times, Carr Center Senior Fellow Alberto Mora is one of the letter's signatories.



Kathryn Sikkink and Avery Schmitt. 2/10/2017. “This Is What Will Happen If Trump Brings Back Secret Prisons.” The Washington Post .Abstract

An analysis, in The Washington Post, from Carr Center's Kathryn Sikkink and research fellow Avery Schmitt.

"Amid the flurry of executive orders issued by President Trump during his first week in office, one remains a work in progress. A draft version of the executive order on the “Detention and Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” has been leaked. It is a complex document with many provisions — all appeared designed to make it possible for the Trump administration to return to Bush policy of secret kidnapping, detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.

Although the Trump administration has publicly backed away from some aspects of the order, Trump’s decision to appoint Gina Haspel — who has been accused of running one of the Bush era secret prisons that tortured inmates — as deputy head of the CIA suggests that Trump continues to be interested in returning to past practices. The mixed signals coming from the administration mean that it is still important to explain what a return of the secret prison system might mean."

Full article at The Washington Post. 



Kathryn Sikkink. 2/6/2017. “Trump Repeats Sad History on Immigration.” SC Times.Abstract

Trump repeats sad history on immigration by Carr Center's Kathryn Sikkink.

"When I was growing in St. Cloud in the 1960s and 1970s, I was already dimly aware that we were an immigrant community.

In particular, I knew the parents and grandparents of many of my schoolmates had come from Germany because I was always in the homeroom full of the kids with German last names — the Schmidts, Schneiders, and Schwartzs. A number of these students came from poor farms outside town. They had to be up very early in the morning before school to help on the farm, before the long bus trip to school, and they came to homeroom, the first class of the day, smelling like the barn.

If I could, I would apologize to those students today for my cruel remarks behind their backs; I, who had the luxury of spending too long every morning in the bathroom getting ready for school (according to my older brother).

Many of the immigrant families in St. Cloud were Catholic, not only from Germany, but from Poland and Ireland. To this day, Census figures show that well over half of the individuals in the St. Cloud metropolitan area trace their ancestry to those three countries."

Read the full article.



John Shattuck. 1/25/2017. “How to Defend Human Rights in the Trump Era.” The Boston Globe.Abstract

Carr Center's Senior Fellow John Shattuck's latest Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.

Recent presidents who threatened rights have been reined in. Richard Nixon used the power of the presidency to attack the Constitution and his political enemies, but the House of Representatives voted to impeach him. Ronald Reagan tried to overturn hard-won legislation on the rights of women and minorities, but civil society groups and a bipartisan congressional coalition beat back the attack. George W. Bush introduced the use of torture in violation of domestic and international law, but resistance inside the federal government led to reinstatement of the torture ban.

Following these examples, a new citizen movement must mobilize the assets of American democracy to protect basic rights and freedoms in the Trump era."

Read the full Op-Ed in the Boston Globe.



Mathias Risse. 12/11/2019. “From Unalienable Rights to Membership Rights in the World Society.” Carr Center Discussion Paper Series (2019-009). See full text.Abstract

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy launched an ambitious initiative in the fall of 2019 to advance the renewal of rights and responsibilities in the United States. The initiative aims to develop research and policy recommendations around six broad themes of concern: democratic process; due process of law; equal protection; freedom of speech, religion, and association; human sustainability; and privacy.

In the most recent Carr Center Discussion Paper, Mathias Risse looks at the Pompeo Commission as a jumping off point to reexamine the distinction between natural law, natural rights, and human rights in the modern day.

Download the full paper. 



John Shattuck. 12/16/2016. “Donald Trump Raises Specter of Treason.” The Boston Globe .Abstract

Read John Shattuck's Op-Ed in The Boston Globe: 

A specter of treason hovers over Donald Trump. He has brought it on himself by dismissing a bipartisan call for an investigation of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee as a “ridiculous” political attack on the legitimacy of his election as president.

Seventeen US national intelligence agencies have unanimously concluded that Russia engaged in cyberwarfare against the US presidential campaign. The lead agency, the CIA, has reached the further conclusion that Russia’s hacking was intended to influence the election in favor of Trump.

Read the full Op-Ed in The Boston Globe.



Kadijatou Diallo and John Shattuck. 6/1/2020. “George Floyd and the History of Police Brutality in America.” Boston Globe. See full text.Abstract

Kadijatou Diallo and John Shattuck discuss the history of racist policing and violence against African Americans in the U.S.

 

The horrific death, captured on video, of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck, spotlights the longstanding crisis of racism in policing.

To understand the protests that have erupted across the United States, one needs to understand the deeply troubled history of policing and race. Police brutality, racial discrimination, and violence against minorities are intertwined and rooted throughout US history. Technology has made it possible for the level and extent of the problem finally to be publicly documented. The anger expressed in the wake of Floyd’s killing reflects the searing reality that Black people in the United States continue to be dehumanized and treated unjustly.

 



John Shattuck and Mathias Risse. 11/6/2020. Voting Rights. Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States. 2020002nd ed. Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Read the ReportAbstract

After more than a century of expanding the voting rights of previously disenfranchised groups, the American electoral system today is confronted by political and legal maneuvers to curtail the hard-won rights of these same groups, ostensibly in the name of combating fraud and regulating voting, but actually to change the outcome of elections. 

"Political campaigns to suppress or dilute votes corrode democracy, frustrate the popular will, and stimulate polarization."

Attacks on the integrity of the electoral system are not new. Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century dominant political forces suppressed voting by African Americans and other minorities, women, immigrants, and young people. Manipulation of voting in the 20th century included racist suppression of African American votes, first by Democrats and later by Republicans. These practices are blatant examples of the vulnerability of the electoral process to partisan manipulation and the necessity of reform to safeguard voting rights, especially among these vulnerable groups.

In his timely addition to the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilites in the U.S. paper series, authors John Shattuck, Mathias Risse, and team outline the expansion of the vote through history, the disproportionate impact of voter suppression, and propose a set of policy recommendations accordingly.

Read the full report. 

See all the issues of the Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities paper series here. 

 

 

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