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    2020 Oct 08

    Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.

    Registration Closed 10:00am to 11:30am

    Location: 

    Virtual Event (Registration Required)

    Please join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for the release of our report on Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the United States. We'll discuss the historical context in which this project was framed, recent developments around rollbacks and movements for expansion of rights, and policy recommendations for building a more robust commitment to rights and responsibilities around six broad areas, including equal protection and due process.  We'll also discuss results from our public opinion poll and townhalls across the United States, conducted with support from the...

    Read more about Reimagining Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.

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    Reimagining Social Movements and Civil Resistance during the Global Pandemic
    Erica Chenoweth, Salil Shetty, and Matthew Smith. 4/17/2020. “Reimagining Social Movements and Civil Resistance during the Global Pandemic.” Carr Center Covid-19 Discussion Paper Series, 04. See full text.Abstract
    Carr Center faculty and fellows outline how social movements and civil resistance can take shape in a time of social distancing, and how these efforts are more important than ever in holding governments accountable.

    We interviewed Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights and International Affairs, Erica Chenoweth, Senior Carr Fellow Salil Shetty, and Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Fortify Rights, Matthew Smith, to discuss how social movements and civil resistance efforts are changing shape in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

    Read the full paper here. 

     

    Remarks Before the Commission on Unalienable Rights
    Martha Minow. 3/17/2020. “Remarks Before the Commission on Unalienable Rights.” Carr Center Discussion Paper Series, 2020-003. See full text.Abstract
    In her address to the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights, Martha Minow discusses the meaning and implications of human rights. 

    "Please accept my thanks for the invitation to speak with you and for your service on this important effort. Grappling with the meaning and implications of human rights is a task that no one generation can complete; comprehension, validation, and commitment require investment of renewing thought and action even though human rights are described as self-evident and eternal. In fact, the reasons why individual nations and even individual people subscribe to notions of human rights vary enormously—and range from idealism to realpolitik—as do their justifications and rationales, which sound in such competing registers as religion, social contract, nature, utility, and game theory.  As I will explain, respect for the dignity of each person offers a core basis for human rights in both substance and in attitudes of respect and civility even when we disagree. Your admirable effort to trace ideas about human rights to deep histories and understandings of eternal truths should underscore the importance of engagement with other nations and multinational convenings as we all face unprecedented challenges to human dignity."

     

    Read full address, here. 

    Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.
    Ralph Ranalli. 9/30/2019. “Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the U.S.” Harvard Kennedy School. See full text.Abstract

    Americans live in a country founded on the concept of individual rights, but human rights experts say more work still needs to be done teaching people what rights actually are, where they come from, and how their neighbors’ rights intertwine with their own.

    A major new initiative from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy will seek to bridge that gap, particularly in the area of how individual rights are inextricably linked to societal responsibility. The two-year research initiative is titled “Renewing Rights and Responsibilities in the US.”

    Read the full article here

    Resisting Trumpism in Europe and the United States
    John Shattuck. 12/2/2016. “Resisting Trumpism in Europe and the United States.” The American Prospect.Abstract
    Read the article by Senior Fellow John Shattuck: 

    Authoritarian democracy is on the march on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite alarming parallels, the U.S. remains better positioned to preserve and rebuild true democracy. 

    The election of Donald Trump shows what happens when democracy misfires. It echoes recent developments in Europe, most notably in Hungary and Poland, where elected leaders are attacking democratic pluralism, minority rights, and civil liberties, keeping the forms of democracy without the substance. The same trends are proceeding in France, the Netherlands, the U.K., and other European democracies where far-right parties under the banner of populist nationalism are pursuing racist and xenophobic objectives.

    Having returned to the United States this fall after seven years in Hungary, I am struck by the shocking parallel between what is happening in Europe and here at home. The Trump election signals a sharp turn toward the populist far right. The presidential campaign was marked by the denigration of women and minorities and the rhetoric of racial extremism. The president-elect’s early appointments include people with these views. Civil liberties are threatened. Foreign alliances are in jeopardy. The risk of war is heightened.

    Rights and Responsibilities in the Coronavirus Pandemic
    Kathryn Sikkink. 3/16/2020. “Rights and Responsibilities in the Coronavirus Pandemic.” OpenGlobalRights. See full text.Abstract
    Touching on points from her newly published book, The Hidden Face of Rights: Towards a Politics of Responsibilities, Kathryn Sikkink urges the global community to place responsibility on all actors to uphold human rights during the Coronavirus pandemic. 

    Building on the work of Iris Marion Young in her posthumous book, Responsibility for Justice, in The Hidden Face of Rights, I argue that all actors socially connected to structural injustice and able to act, need to take action to address the injustice. One problem with the word responsibility is that people often use it in the common legal meaning focused on who is to blame or liable. This is what Iris Young has called backward-looking responsibility or the “liability model.” She focused on political responsibility that is forward-looking. This kind of responsibility asks not “who is to blame,” but “what should we do?” Forward-looking responsibility is necessary to address the Coronavirus pandemic and to think about what we should do in the world after the pandemic. I also draw on Max Weber’s idea of an ethic of responsibility in Politics as a Vocation to stress that it is not enough to act with good intentions. We also need to have done our research about the most effective way to act so that our actions have the impact we seek.


    This framework is useful in the context of the Coronavirus crisis because it involves both a range of rights and responsibilities of many actors. Our right to health, but also rights to liberty, freedom of movement, to education, to information, to food and shelter are all at stake. As countries ramp up exclusionary travel and border policies, some of these rights may be imperiled, and governments need to strike a balance between protecting the health and respecting human rights, as the WHO Secretary General recognized in his briefing on March 12. A quarantine is a legitimate state policy in times of health emergencies, but the state must attend to the rights of individuals caught in the quarantine to adequate health care, food, and shelter. 

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