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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.



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.



Dara Kay Cohen and Valerie M. Hudson. 12/16/2016. “Women’s Rights Are a National Security Issue.” The New York Times . See full text.Abstract

Dara Key Cohen's Op-Ed published in the New York Times. 

"The Trump transition team asked the State Department last week to submit details of programs and jobs that focus on promoting gender equality. Maybe it’s for benign purposes — or better, a signal that the administration wants to make women’s empowerment a cornerstone of its foreign policy. But this seems unlikely, to put it mildly, given that such a commitment was absent from Donald J. Trump’s campaign, and alongside Mr. Trump’s vow to defund Planned Parenthood.

Whatever the reason for their request, Mr. Trump and Rex W. Tillerson, his pick for secretary of state, should remember that women’s rights are tied directly to national security. The State Department’s gender equality programs are not just politically correct fluff — they deal with matters of life and death, like rape during war, genital cutting, forced marriage and access to education. The State Department provides essential funding to combat these problems."

Read the full Op-Ed in the New York Times



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.



Tom O'Bryan. 11/29/2016. “In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Donations Were Too Little Too Late.” Foreign Policy .Abstract

Read the article by Carr Center Research Assistant Tom O'Bryan:

Countless studies have shown that democracies are less likely to go to war, torture their own citizens, and censor the media. That's one reason why Western governments and philanthropic foundations funnel more than $10 billion every year into promoting democracy overseas. For example, donors fund efforts to help train election observers, educate voters about their rights, and train local media outlets to cover political issues.

In the last year, more than $70 million have been spent on such projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a poor and fragile country emerging from over two decades of armed conflict. That may sound like a lot of money, but in relative terms it's not. The American, British and Canadian governments alone spent more than eight times that amount on democracy promotion in Afghanstan during the country's most recent elections.

Read the full article in Foreign Policy 

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