What constitutional law arguments might be used to fight the criminalization of abortion in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision? In this talk, Cary Franklin, McDonald/Wright Chair of Law at UCLA School of Law, will assert that the Constitution’s guarantee of sex equality offers a potent tool for challenging criminal abortion bans by state governments. As states turn to the most coercive methods for regulating women’s reproductive capacities, Franklin contends that their carceral tools, including the criminalization of abortion, render women less-than-equal citizens in violation of the Constitutional guarantee of “equal protection.”
While Dobbs eliminated the “liberty” to have an abortion, lawyers and advocates are working to find new paths forward. Franklin will trace one of these paths, showing how fifty years of jurisprudence on sex equality can be used to protect women from the carceral threats of abortion criminalization.
Elizabeth Sepper, Crillon C. Payne, II Professor in Health Law at UT School of Law, will respond.
Meet other UT graduate students and faculty members researching human rights and social justice issues! This is also a great opportunity to learn about our affiliate program and our fieldwork grants.
Wendy Bach, Professor of Law at University of Tennessee College of Law, will present the preliminary findings of a national research study tracking prosecutions for pregnancy-related conduct in the first year after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, contextualizing them within larger conversations about pregnancy criminalization. Jennifer Laurin, George R. Killam, Jr. Chair of Criminal Law at UT School of Law, will respond.
Hear from human rights summer fellows and Rapoport Center staff on how to find, apply for, and take advantage of professional opportunities in human rights. Cabo Bobs will be served for lunch!
Public panel discussion on xenophobia at the U.S.-Mexico border featuring United Nations experts, scholars, organizers, and policymakers in dialogue with the community.
Amanda Heffernan, Assistant Professor of Nursing at Seattle University, will discuss her study of the impact of pregnancy-related immigration policies on the lived experiences of pregnant migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border during the Trump and Biden administrations. The findings demonstrate, she will argue, that under every policy regime, pregnant persons have been negatively impacted. Denise Gilman, Clinical Professor at UT School of Law, will respond.
Isabel Jaramillo Sierra, Professor of Law at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, will outline the feminist strategies that contributed to the decriminalization of abortion in Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico. She will contrast those “old feminisms” with “new” feminist approaches more inclined toward social media, arguing for the need to bridge gaps between old and new feminisms to continue to work toward reproductive justice. Neville Hoad, Associate Professor of English and co-director of the Rapoport Center, will respond.
Using a disability justice lens, Robyn Powell, Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law, will argue that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization exacerbates a paradox for disabled people: they may be forced to bear children but subsequently denied the opportunity to rear them because of laws, policies, and practices that assume incompetence among disabled parents. Julie Minich, Associate Professor of English at UT Austin, will respond.
Prize-winning poet and physician Fady Joudah will read from his visionary sixth collection of poems, [...], and engage in conversation with UT professor and poet Roger Reeves.
Join If/When/How, EC4EC, and Students for Planned Parenthood for a presentation to answer your questions about what reproductive rights you have as a Texan and how to access confidential, accurate, and legal reproductive health resources.
The Rapoport Center's Spring 2024 conference, Disarming Toxic Empire, brought together academics, advocates, and artists working through intergenerational channels of memory and justice to respond to nuclear toxicity in all its forms and manifestations, in sites ranging from the Navajo Nation and the Pacific Islands to Japan, North Africa, and Ghana.
Rapoport Center staff and former Rapoport Center Summer Fellows will give tips and tricks on finding human rights positions before the summer. The session will also outline the application process for the Rapoport Center’s Summer Fellowship Funding.
Join us for a special lunchtime event with Dr. Karen Korematsu, Executive Director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the historic Korematsu V. United States Supreme Court ruling sanctioning the incarceration of thousands of Japanese people during WWII.
In the midst of the most recent war in Sudan, Sudanese-American author Fatin Abbas read to a UT audience from her highly acclaimed book, Ghost Season: A Novel.
When the local mosque is burned to the ground in an apparent hate crime, the town of Victoria must overcome its age-old political, racial, and economic divides to find a collective way forward.
Two dynamics have been making their imprint on the political landscape of Europe over the past decade: the rise of economic inequality and the rise of far-right parties. Are the two phenomena related? And why isn’t the rage of impoverished workers fueling support for the left? Professor Albena Azmanova will trace policy developments through which these processes have taken place, in order to disclose the political and economic logic behind the spread of autocratic rule in Europe.
Professor Ocen's talk highlighted the racialized and gendered ways that incapacitation, or the idea of removing dangerous people from society, has been used to regulate the bodies and reproductive capacities of marginalized women. Specifically, through the “incapacitation of motherhood,” people in women's prisons are alienated from their children, denied reproductive care, humiliated during pregnancy and postpartum recovery, and in some cases, sterilized. It explored ways to contest these practices through both law and social movements, including prison abolition, informed by the principles of reproductive justice. Nessette Falu, Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, responded.
Ji Seon SongAssistant Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law
Professor Song's talk examined the extent of hospitals' participation in policing and punishment, arguing that hospitals in the “free world” have become part of the carceral infrastructure, performing functions essential to the operations of mass incarceration by identifying criminals, helping build criminal cases, preparing people for incarceration, and treating and returning people to imprisonment. Snehal Patel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Dell Medical School, responded.
This critical, interdisciplinary roundtable discussion, framed by two exhibitions of materials from Chile at the Benson Latin American Collection, brings together scholars and activists who will focus on different historical memories to consider the history and trajectory of Chile over the past six decades as they think towards possible futures.
Aziza AhmedProfessor of Law and N. Neal Pike Scholar at the Boston University School of Law; Co-Director of the BU Law Program in Reproductive Justice
Using the example of the highly controversial forensic method known as the “floating lungs” test in the context of self-induced abortion and stillbirths, Professor Ahmed's talk interrogated the relationship between scientific expertise, evidence, and lawmaking, and argued that contestation around medical and epidemiological evidence shapes the regulation and criminalization of pregnancy-related outcomes. Jennifer Laurin, Wright C. Morrow Professor of Law, responded.
The ninth annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights featured Kathryn Bond Stockton, Distinguished Professor of English, former Associate Vice President for Equity and Diversity, and former inaugural Dean of the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at the University of Utah, where she teaches queer theory, theories of race and racialized gender, and twentieth-century literature and film.
Kareem Abdulrahman’s talk is dedicated to discussing the novel, but also his journey in literary translation, which, like most activities Kurds undertake, could potentially become a political act. He will probe questions such as: Where do the politics of publishing and those of the Middle East collide? Is literary translation a means to put the Kurds, the largest minority group without their own nation state, on the world’s cultural map? In this sense, is a translator also an activist? What unique challenges do translators of Kurdish texts face?
How might we use this moment to rename, refine, and make more publicly intelligible the set of justice concerns – access, historical redress, fairness, equal opportunity – that were in many ways shorthanded by DEI? Please join us for a roundtable discussion on “Critical Lives in Red States.”
In this two-panel event, recipients of the Rapoport Center’s Summer 2023 Graduate Student Fieldwork Grants on Human Rights & Inequality will discuss their research and share advice, insight, and lessons for others carrying out fieldwork.
In this talk, Cynthia Conti-Cook argued that because digital devices and the corporate archives that support them have given police and other system state actors profound access to the details of our daily lives, people forced into self-managed care for issues related to everything between birth through burial will increasingly need to rely on their digital bodies’ ability to safely traverse digital borders. Sarah Brayne, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, responded.
Join us to learn more about what reproductive rights are available to Texans and how to access confidential and accurate reproductive health resources. This event is co-sponsored by the Sissy Farenthold Reproductive Justice Defense Project in partnership with If/When/How at Texas Law, EC4EC, and Students 4 Planned Parenthood.
UNDERGRADS: join us for the inaugural semester of Human Rights and Global Societies Coffee Chats, a partnership between the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice and International Relations and Global Studies. Facilitated by undergraduate student leaders, each Coffee Chat will explore a different topic related to human rights, national identity, and cultural politics.
Rachel RebouchéDean and the James E. Beasley Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
Professor Rachel Rebouché discussed the attempts by antiabortion activists to stop medication abortion by any means necessary, including through criminalization; the implications for reproductive justice and public health; and how abortion rights advocates can keep these implications at the fore of their own efforts to increase access to abortion pills through federal and state advocacy. Kari White, Associate Professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work, responded.
Marking the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, Iraqi-American poet and novelist Professor Sinan Antoon visited UT for a public reading from his new novel, Khuzama, on the eve of its publication.
This roundtable featured Dr. Raj Patel and Dr. Erin Lentz of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, Dr. Alex Racelis of UTRGV, Carolina Mueller of the National Young Farmers Coalition, and Doris Brown and Ben Hirsch of West Street Recovery (Houston). Dr. Jason Cons, Associate Professor of Anthropology at UT Austin, moderated.
In this talk, Chilean legal scholar Amaya Alvez, who served as an elected member of the 2021-22 Chilean Constitutional Convention, argued that Chile’s Constitutions have long enabled natural resource governance that perpetuates (neo)colonial dispossession and makes Indigenous peoples invisible.
Indigenous scholar and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Dr. Heather Dorries discussed the conflicting and contradictory nature of park management in Toronto, focusing on the ways park management has become part of the City of Toronto’s Reconciliation Action Plan and the ways the City has violently cleared parks of homeless encampments.
This event featured Dr. Shafqat Hussain, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian Studies at Trinity College, who discussed livestock insurance, justice, and policymaking in snow leopard conservation in Northern Pakistan.
Dorothy RobertsGeorge A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania
The eighth annual Sissy Farenthold Lecture featured acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, Dorothy Roberts, on the intersections among reproductive rights, criminalization of pregnancy, and the family policing/separation systems in the aftermath of the June 2022 Dobbs decision. Roberts explored the histories of compelled births in the US dating back to Black women’s reproductive bondage during slavery, and the abolitionist frameworks that call for the dismantling of these targeted, oppressive structures in favor of more compassionate and equitable reproductive rights and family support systems.
Dr. Adil Hasan Khan of Melbourne Law School discussed the widely perceived and ongoing "citizenship crisis" in contemporary India, highlighting the historic relationship between the phenomenon of statelessness and the institution and protection of minority rights.
This event featured Dr. Julia Dehm, Senior Lecturer at the La Trobe Law School in Melbourne, Australia and 2022-2023 Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and former postdoctoral fellow at the Rapoport Center who discussed reparations and historical responsibility in the international climate regime.
This roundtable discussion, the first event in our Spring 2023 Cultures of Environmental Justice colloquium and co-sponsored by Planet Texas 2050, featured local activists and organizations discussing the ongoing justice implications of Winter Storm Uri.
Professor Wendy A. Bach of the University of Tennessee College of Law discussed new book, "Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care," which focuses on Tennessee’s fetal assault law as an example of the criminalization of care in poor communities. Professor Aziza Ahmed, Boston University School of Law, responded.
Melissa Murray, professor at New York University School of Law and leading expert in family law, constitutional law, and reproductive rights and justice, delivered an address titled “Race-ing Roe and Woke Warriors: Weaponizing Racial Justice at the Supreme Court.”
A discussion with UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, hosted by the University of Minnesota's Human Rights Center.
This two-part inaugural event of the Sissy Farenthold Fund for Peace and Social Justice brought together elected officials representing Austin and Travis County residents at the city, county, state, and federal levels—along with abortion funders and abortion rights advocates—to share strategies for securing post-Roe reproductive justice in Texas and beyond.
Participants considered the past, present, and future of work and livelihoods to generate much-needed responses that can productively confront uneven power relations and entrenched forms of racialized and gendered economic marginality.
The seventh annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture Series in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights was delivered by author-activist Arundhati Roy.
Antonio Herman BenjaminJustice, Superior Tribunal de Justiça (National High Court of Brazil)
Antonio Herman Benjamin, Justice on the Superior Tribunal de Justiça (the National High Court of Brazil), presented his current work on the legal protection of forests and emerging principles in environmental law.
Nancy Hollander, an internationally recognized criminal defense attorney, represented Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who was detained for 14 years without charge. The case inspired 'The Mauritanian' (2021), with Jodie Foster as Hollander.
This pop-up institute was an interdisciplinary and cross-campus initiative supported by the Office of the Vice President for Research. In engaging researchers from across the University of Texas campus, the initiative expanded the boundaries of its investigation into gendered and racialized economic, political, and legal structures that produce and sustain inequality and worker precarity.
40 for Forty is a semiannual event which helps the Rapoport Center raise funds to support opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students to engage in human rights and social justice work.
A panel discussion on the Rapoport Center’s report on the legal and political drivers behind the effects of COVID-19 on low-income Latinx construction workers in the Austin area. The event featured responses to the report, with a focus on Austin’s accelerating urban growth and its impact on social determinants of health and worker organizing.
Juan De LaraAssociate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Founding Director of the Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies, University of Southern California
Respondent: Sharmila Rudrappa, Professor of Sociology, Director of the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin
Karen EngleFounder and Co-Director; Minerva House Drysdale Regents Chair in Law
Rapoport Center co-director Karen Engle participated in a global academic panel discussion on the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, to the UN General Assembly. Organized by the Displacement Research and Action Network at MIT.
Charles M. BlowNew York Times Op-Ed Columnist, Author of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones"
The Rothko Chapel and the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice's 6th annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights featured journalist, author, and political analyst Charles Blow.
The Workers Defense Project's 8th Annual Changemakers Luncheon honored Texas' essential immigrant workers who put their lives on the line to keep our economy running while building power for all workers.
Aaron BenanavPostdoctoral Researcher, Humboldt University, Berlin
Respondent: Ann Huff Stevens, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, David Bruton Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts in the Department of Economics, UT Austin
University of Minnesota: This webinar delved into the impacts of systemic racism while suggesting alternative social and policy paths for improving lives and health by respecting the rights of Black people in the United States.
40 for Forty is a semiannual event which helps the Rapoport Center raise funds to support opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students to engage in human rights and social justice work.
Six advocates highlighted the critical importance of engaging jailhouse lawyers--and incarcerated people generally--in the current movements for prison abolition and racial justice. Speaking from lived experience and advocacy, the panelists discussed issues such as legal empowerment, prison and jail conditions, parole, clemency, and re-entry.
This event featured a bilingual conversation between quilombola advocates in Brazil and members of the Austin Justice Coalition about shared experiences and differences in the fight against white supremacy, police violence, and territorial dispossession in Brazil and the U.S.
Lunchtime panel discussion and Q&A for law students on emerging legal issues from government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic—covered immigration law and policy to criminal justice and prisoners’ rights to health care and religious liberty, and lots of points in between.
This event highlighted the work of LLM Candidate and Rapoport Center Human Rights Scholar, Gowthaman Ranganathan. Gowthaman shared some of his experiences working on gender and sexuality in India including the constitutional challenge to the anti-sodomy law and the rights of transgender persons.
Renowned human rights attorney and professor Michael Tigar discussed his professional experiences in the human rights realm and answered student questions about pursuing social justice-oriented careers.
Students interested in applying for one of our summer fellowships came and talked with our team and former fellows about placements, application tips, and more!
The Rapoport Center in Austin hosted an interdisciplinary conference to consider the relationships among the human rights, prison abolition, and penal reform movements. We invited proposals for papers, panels, art, or other forms of presentation from activists, practitioners, and scholars in all disciplines.
Ruth Wilson GilmoreProfessor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, American Studies; Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York
The Rapoport Center and the Rothko Chapel are pleased to announce that Ruth Wilson Gilmore headlined the fifth annual Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights.
Participants met with activists to learn about Grassroots Leadership's work fighting for decarceration, including in the context of immigration detention.
On April 11-12, 2019, the Institute for Historical Studies convened local and international scholars to examine the theme of “freedom,” building upon the inherent tension and historical instability of the word, and treating this as an intellectual and political problem of considerable interest to our world today. The Rapoport Center co-sponsored this event.
Thomas Saenz, President and General Counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), spoke on “Latino and Immigrant Rights in the Trump Era” at the Law School.
Serges Djoyou KamgaAssociate Professor of Law, Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, University of South Africa
Dr. Djoyou Kamga's presented her research, which over the years has demonstrated a profound and sustained commitment to advancing knowledge about human rights in Africa, especially on the right to development in the African human rights system, human rights from cross cultural perspectives, and disability rights.
WAR DON DON, directed by first-time filmmaker Rebecca Richman Cohen, follows the war crimes trial of Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel leader Issa Sesay, exploring the complex relationship between individual accountability, collective reconciliation and the limits of international justice.
The symposium focused on Puerto Rico one year after Hurricane Maria and brought together scholars, activists, and artists from the island and the diaspora to reflect on how Maria and its aftermath affected their work.
Elizabeth YeampierreExecutive Director, UPROSE and Co-Chair, Climate Justice Alliance
Puerto Rican attorney and climate justice activist Elizabeth Yeampierre headlined the fourth Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, hosted by the Rapoport Center and the Rothko Chapel.
This event celebrated the launch of a digital archive featuring hundreds of documents that offer a glimpse into Michael Tigar’s multifaceted life as an activist, lawyer, and academic.
This conference explored how the regulation of migration has often served complex political and economic agendas by reinforcing inequalities through imposed legal categories. Through immigration restrictions, governments have acted to exclude, control, and derive gain from groups of men and women who, driven by poverty, environmental degradation, violence, and repression, have sought to enter the borders they enforce.
Daniel BrinksCo-director (2010-2019); Professor of Government and of Law; Chair, Government Department
The LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections features Dr. Daniel M. Brinks for a presentation on his co-authored book, "The DNA of Constitutional Justice in Latin America: Politics, Governance, and Judicial Design."
Free and open to the public.
Steve ViscelliLecturer, Department of Sociology and Senior Fellow, Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, University of Pennsylvania
Among the major changes in employment in recent decades, the rise of independent contracting is one of the least understood. In fact, why less-skilled workers choose to become independent contractors has not been studied in detail at all.
Since being retained by the Chagos Islanders in 1997, Robin Mardemootoo has litigated in the UK, the US, and now before the ICJ at The Hague. He is the leading lawyer coordinating the crossborder litigation, which seeks to return the Chagossian people to their homeland and compensate them for the abuses they suffered at the hands of the US and UK governments.
Sarah ThébaudAssociate Professor of Sociology, University of California-Santa Barbara
Sarah Thébaud, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California-Santa Barbara, will discuss her research on gender inequalities and work practices.
Ileana RodríguezDistinguished Professor Emeritus in Latin American Literatures and Culture - Ohio State University
Dr. Rodríguez's presentation explores: 1) the nature, possibility or impossibility of the political, examining the makeup of the social subject—here woman as urban guerrilla; and 2) the understanding of ‘the feminine’ as an entry point to the maleability or transformability of being.
Mary Marshall ClarkDirector, Center for Oral History Research, Columbia University
Clark will discuss the work of Columbia University’s Center for Oral History Research in conversation with the Rapoport Center’s Archives and Human Rights working group.
Mary Marshall ClarkDirector, Center for Oral History Research, Columbia University
This talk will explore the ethical, legal and constitutional issues that have arisen since the designation of Guantánamo Bay as a site of incarceration and torture for people suspected of terrorism against the United States, following the events of September 11, 2001.
Mary Marshall ClarkDirector, Center for Oral History Research, Columbia University
Clark will visit Professor Ann Cvetkovich’s Archival Fictions seminar in order to discuss Columbia University’s September 11, 2001 Oral History and Narrative Memory Project.
Graduate students who undertook Summer Fellowships in Human Rights will reflect on their field work, and share their experience working at some of the most cutting-edge human rights and social justice organizations around the world.
Free pizza and refreshments!
Rachel Ida BuffProfessor of History, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
This talk explores some of the exploits of the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born (ACPFB), an immigrant rights organization operative between 1933 and 1982.
Arne Kalleberg from the University of North Carolina will present "Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies" as part of the Population Research Center Brown Bag series.
Dietrich ThränhardtProfessor of Political Science, University of Münster, Germany
Dietrich Thränhardt, one of the most renowned European immigration scholars, will discuss the influx of Syrian refugees to the European Union since 2015, Germany's contradictory responses to this refugee immigration, and the European Union's struggle to find a common approach in the field of migration policies.
Alvaro SantosProfessor, Georgetown University Law Center
Santos will be presenting his latest work, “Lessons from the TPP and the Future of Labor Chapters in Trade Agreements.” His piece uses the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to think through the merits of traditional “trade-labor” linkages, and explores various ways to “retool” the global economic regime to address broader distributive concerns and ameliorate the ill-effects of trade liberalization on labor, such as job losses and wage declines.
Thinking about a human rights or social justice internship? The Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice has multiple funding options and placements available!
The Human Rights Clinic at Texas Law will present its report "Control...Over the Entire State of Coahuila: An analysis of testimonies in trials against Zeta members in San Antonio, Austin, and Del Rio, Texas."
Ayşe ParlaAssociate Professor of Anthropology, Sabanci Universitesi, Istanbul; Visitor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Based on long-term ethnographic research in Turkey among ethnically Turkish labor migrants from Bulgaria, Parla’s presentation will inquire into the appeal and limits of the term “precarity,” an increasingly ubiquitous designation to refer to a generalized condition of insecurity and vulnerability.
Elizabeth DoudClimakaze Artistic Director, FUNDarte, Inc. & Americas Program Coordinator, National Performance Network
Cultural response to climate change is now inevitably global and local, telling specific stories about people, the land where they live and unique ecosystems, and communities of solidarity. This presentation will address these themes through discussion of Elizabeth Doud’s performance research project and other cultural organizing work.
The Rapoport Center, the Latin America Regional Office of the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and the Latin American Network on Extractive Industries (RLIE) co-organized a conference in Lima, Peru on natural resource governance, inequality and human rights.
The conference will celebrate the transformative impact of Barbara Harlow’s scholarly and institutional commitments and imagine their future trajectories.
Ai-jen PooNational Domestic Workers Alliance, Caring Across Generations
The Rapoport Center and the Rothko Chapel are pleased to announce that labor organizer, author, and activist Ai-jen Poo will headline the third Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights.
This forum, organized by Native American and Indigenous Studies, will feature presentations by two high-profile indigenous leaders who have played an internationally and locally influential role in the struggles and advancement of indigenous self-determination.
The third wave of democracy swept rapidly over Latin America, so that by the end of the twentieth century nearly the entire region was democratic. Since then, however, much of the democratic discontent in the region has centered on the weakness of these very same institutions. This workshop will use the combined experience of some of the best researchers on Latin American institutions to take a deeper look at the distance between the promise and the performance of these formal institutional innovations.
Central American migration to the U.S. and to Mexico presents unique challenges in the current political environment. This panel of Mexican and U.S. migration experts will discuss the obstacles facing Central Americans who are fleeing violence and seeking protection.
This symposium marks the 10-year anniversary of the implementation of the Secure Fence Act and it reflects on the potential expansion and hardening of the physical and political reality of the U.S. border wall. It is a follow-up to the first symposium organized by the Rapoport Center in 2010.
This bi-national forum will explore how the future of trade under the new U.S. administration might impact citizens working on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border and assess the relationship between trade and the flux of internal migration.
This workshop and public forum will explore global supply chains and the possibilities and limitations of third-party certification schemes for the realization and enforcement of human rights.
Jon SawyerExecutive Director, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
Join us for a conversation with award-winning journalist Cynthia Gorney about her Pulitzer Center-supported National Geographic project, "For Widows, Life After Loss."
Panelists discussed current international human rights issues and the important impacts of these issues on all aspects of today's international law practice.
A screening of the Netflix original documentary "13th" with a post-film discussion led by Texas Law faculty Jennifer Laurin and Jordan Steiker. Pizza provided.
The 16th Annual Sequels Symposium will address, through a series of interdisciplinary and cross-regional panels and papers, the spiraling crises – global, regional, national, and local – of precarity, security, and surveillance.
Mark UngarProfessor of Political Science, Brooklyn College and Graduate Center; Doctoral Program in Criminal Justice, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Professor Wiley and student performers from both sides of the US/Mexico border will present an abridged (25 minute) version of Crawling with Monsters which explores the lived realities of children growing up in gang held territories.
Franck DüvellAssociate Professor and Senior Researcher, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford
In 2015, about 850,00 people, a quarter of all arrivals in Turkey, moved on irregularly to the EU. This represents a sudden change from 2014, when only 51,000 people left Turkey for the EU. What was going in Turkey in 2015 that can explain these processes?
Franck DüvellAssociate Professor and Senior Researcher, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford
Policy debates and media coverage during the migration ‘crisis’ gave a misleading impression of a linear, uninterrupted flow of people towards Europe. Instead, research found that this migration was the result of a temporary merger of diverse migrations of a huge range of people along many routes.
Join us for an informal conversation with clinical faculty, staff, and students about defending rights (civil, environmental, human, immigrant, worker, etc.) in a post-election landscape. Free pizza. All are welcome.
Meet the directors and join us for a screening and discussion of the documentary film "Under the Stack," which examines the experiences and struggles of communities with prolonged relationships with the American Smelting and Refining Company.
Stacy KoskoAssistant Research Professor & Associate Director, Minor in International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland
Professor Kosko will discuss how the formal categorizing of different types of ethnocultural minorities affects how international human rights law can protect them.
Maudí TzayAlliance to Break the Silence and End Impunity
Please join us for a talk on the recent landmark case that tried crimes against humanity for sexual violence and sexual and domestic slavery committed against Q’eqchí women at Sepur Zarco military base in Guatemala. Light lunch provided.
The 2nd Annual Sissy Farenthold Endowed Lecture explored the intersection of the arts and human rights, and the need for artists and non-artists alike to engage more fully with the power of artistic expression in the instigation of social change. Darren Walker was in conversation with bestselling author, curator, and professor Sarah Lewis.
Angelina GodoyHelen H. Jackson Endowed Chair in Human Rights and Director of the Center for Human Rights, University of Washington
As part of LLILAS Benson's “Digital Scholarship in the Americas” speaker series, Angelina Godoy discusses the amnesty law in El Salvador, examining the possible role of digital archaeology in the pursuit of truth and justice there.
Mustafa GurbuzAdjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University
As part of the Turkish Ottoman Lecture Series, Dr. Gurbuz will present the situation of the Kurds in Turkey as a case study for attempting to understand the conditions that foster nonviolent civic engagement in emerging civil societies.
Join us to learn more about the Texas Justice Initiative and how it can be a resource to you in your work! Mingle with other people interested in criminal justice reform, with light food and drink provided.
Thinking about a human rights internship? The Rapoport Center and the Human Rights Law Society invite you to an info session on how you can find and fund internships with human rights organizations here in the US and around the world. Free pizza!
Khatharya UmAssociate Professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Professor Khatharya Um will discuss her recent book From the Land of Shadows (NYU Press, 2015), which examines the factors and conditions that produced the genocidal outcome in Cambodia, as well as the struggle of Cambodians, both in Cambodia and in the diaspora, to live with and transcend this historical trauma in the aftermath.
This conference considered whether international human rights law, movements, and discourses have, could or should engage with the problem of economic inequality nationally or internationally.
Scott HendlerAttorney and Counselor at Law, Hendler Lyons Flores
Austin attorney Scott Hendler will talk about his experience litigating against American corporations on behalf of Central American agricultural workers.
Sean SellersCo-founder and Senior Investigator, Fair Food Standards Council
The roundtable will consider the possibilities and limitations of various forms of certification regimes for the realization, enforcement and governance of human rights.
Christy E. LopezDeputy Chief, Special Litigation Section, Justice Department Civil Rights Division
Please join us for a talk by Christy Lopez, a national expert on policing who led the DOJ’s investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri, police department.
Balakrishnan RajagopalAssociate Professor of Law and Development and Founding Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mark DannerChancellor’s Professor of English and Journalism, UC Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities, Bard College
The inaugural lecture featured writer and journalist Mark Danner, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Journalism at UC Berkeley and James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College.
This conference considered from both an historical and contemporary perspective many of the issues to which Farenthold has dedicated her life, from political campaigns to international advocacy.
Federico FinchelsteinAssociate Professor of History, Chair of the Historical Studies Department, and Director of The Janey Program in Latin American Studies, The New School for Social Research
George AnnasWilliam Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health
Sofia GruskinDirector, Program on Global Health & Human Rights and Professor of Preventive Medicine and Professor of Law, University of Southern California
Sonia Dayan-HerzbrunProfessor Emeritus of Social Sciences, University Paris Diderot-Paris 7
Hilal ElverSpecial Rapporteur on the Right to Food, United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; Research Professor and Co-Director of the Project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy, Orfalea Center, University of California, Santa Barbara
Richard FalkAlbert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice, Emeritus, Princeton University; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Global & International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
The conference will explore the genesis of human rights constitutionalism and its effects on the human rights agenda in different regions of the world.
Fionnuala Ní AoláinDorsey & Whitney Chair in Law, University of Minnesota Law School, and Professor of Law, Transitional Justice Institute, University of Ulster
Aziz RanaAssociate Professor of Law, Cornell University Law School
This conference will bring together scholars, human rights advocates and policy makers from around the world to assess critically the human rights movement’s focus on anti-impunity.
James GibsonSidney W. Souers Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Citizenship and Democratic Values, Washington University in St. Louis
This conference explored topics such as changing conceptions of property, the role of property rights in dispossession and redistribution, and the implications of private titling.
The conference brought together scholars, activists, performance artists, and journalists to explore the intersections of violence, the colonial past, memory, and trauma in the National Theatre of Scotland's play 'Black Watch', presented by Texas Performing Arts.
Claudia BrionesProfessor and Director of the Graduate and Postgraduate Program in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National University of Rio Negro (UNRN) in Argentina
This conference brought together interdisciplinary thinkers who have researched the recent history of walls – made, unmade, in the making – and their consequences on the geographies of nation states.
To commemorate the Rapoport Center's five-year anniversary, the Center's 5th Annual conference considered the human rights work being done at the University of Texas campuses.
Activists, attorneys, community leaders, historians, and others from Texas and around the country discussed the relevance of human rights as a tool for Black self-determination and racial justice.
Roberto GargarellaProfessor of Constitutional Theory and Political Philosophy at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
The Center's 4th Annual conference focused on the acquisition by the Harry Ransom Center of a historic collection of photojournalistic work documenting El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.
Irene TinkerEmerita Professor, Departments of City and Regional Planning & Women's Studies, UC Berkeley; Founder, International Centre for Research on Women
The conference used Lister, the State Department’s first Human Rights Officer in the Latin American bureau, as a launching point for exploring various human rights policy development issues.
This conference will consider how international human rights law and discourse migrate, and how, in the process, issues of culture emerge internationally.
In this workshop, an interdisciplinary cohort discussed facets of the broad topic of Black and indigenous land rights in Latin America, promoting dialogue across the academic/activist divide.
Practitioners, policymakers, activists, and academics from a variety of disciplines considered the underlying concerns that animate today's debates over the global flow of labor and capital.
