Spring 2009 DHRC Events Calendar

Part of the "Colombia: the Presence of the Impossible" film and discussion series organized by Diana Gomez and Miguel Rojas-Sotelo

This session will focus on the role of the media and alternative writings of Colombia's recent history through memory with guest speakers Fabio Lopez de la Roche and Oscar Pedraza.

Oscar Pedraza will speak about "Son and Daughter for memory and against impunity," related to his work with Hijos e Hijas, a social organization where sons and daughters of disappeared and murdered victims find a place to share and participate actively in actions towards true and justice. They use memory as a tool to re-inscribe personal and collective stories into the main stream of the official Colombian history. Through performance, concerts, poetry, meetings, and supervision of the legal cases of their parents Hijos e Hijas accomplishes their mission. Additionally, they maintain a comfort zone for those children that had suffered persecution and the disappearance of their parents. For them an open and public discussion and the recognition of the conflict in all its dimensions are fundamental in reaching a stage in which memory, justice, and reparation can be achieved.

Fabio López will speak about "Mass Media, democracy and political culture in Colombia during Uribe's era: realities, fictions, challenges," on the communications policy of President Álvaro Uribe's government and its relationship to private and public mass media.

Two short films will also be screened. "El Baile Rojo: El exterminio de la UP" / The Red Dance: the annihilation of the UP explores the annihilation of the Union Patriótica, a leftist political party that emerged as part of the peace process in mid 1980s (it was the political arm of the FARC in their intent to return to civil life). "Hijos e Hijas: Todos somos Colombia" chronicles the work of this group of family members of the "disappeared."

Sponsored by the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Duke Human Rights Center

7:00 pm, Room 240 Franklin Center (2204 Erwin Road, Duke Campus)

Free and open to the public - Parking behind Franklin Center at Pickens Family Health Center is free after 6pm

For more information contact rojaszotelo@gmail.com

Justice Albie Sachs of the Constitutional Court of South Africa will speak about the thinking behind the country's new Constitutional Court building, meant "...to inspire judges and ordinary people alike in our collective pursuit of justice." Justice Sachs's career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention. In 1966 he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye. During the 1980s working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the ANC in exile, he helped draft the organization's Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bomb he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court. In addition to his work on the Court, he has traveled to many countries sharing South African experience in healing divided societies. He has also been engaged in the sphere of art and architecture, and played an active role in the development of the Constitutional Court building and its art collection on the site of the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg.

His talk will be moderated by Prof. Catherine Admay, Public Policy Studies & Duke Center for International Development and the Concilium on Southern Africa

Sponsored by the Concilium on Southern Africa and co-sponsored by: The Provost's Common Fund, Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, the Duke Center for International Development, the Duke University Program on History, Public Policy and Social Change, the Duke Human Rights Center, Duke Law School, the Franklin Humanities Institute, the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Nasher Museum of Art.

5:00 to 6:30 p.m. at the Nasher Museum of Art

Free and open to the public - A reception will follow

Parking available at the Nasher lot, map at nasher.duke.edu/visitus.php.

View event poster

Incarceration rates in the United States have grown exponentially since the 1980s. At the same time prisons have become increasingly industrialized and central to local, state, and national economies. A variety of detention centers on U.S. soil and abroad have become sites of contested legality and human rights. This conference enhances both scholarly and public knowledge about imprisonment, incarceration, and detention, and to foster communication across disciplines, institutions, and practices. It is our hope that by bringing together a diverse group of scholars and activists that we might begin to think about the question of action. In addition to graduate student paper presentations, there will be a series of workshops and panel sessions that with interactive or hands-on learning experiences for conference participants. These workshops will address a number of themes such as: the War on Terror, Extraordinary Rendition, and Human Rights; Health and Incarceration; Imprisoned Intellectuals and Artists; Immigration and the Business of Detention.

The conference is sponsored by the UNC Department of Anthropology, the Duke Department of Cultural Anthropology, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Duke-UNC Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, the UNC Latino Migration Project of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, Duke Latino/a Studies, Duke Romance Studies and the UNC School of Social Medicine.

Friday, February 27, 6:00 pm

"Up the Ridge," a documentary film: Up the Ridge is a one-hour television documentary produced by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ's for the Appalachian region's only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region's newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.

The film will be followed by panel discussion with filmmakers, an open mic and a Spoken Word Performance by members of SpiritHouse.

Richard White Auditorium, Room 107 - Duke University East Campus

Free and open to the public - Parking available on East Campus

Saturday, February 28, 9:00 am-7:30 pm

9:15-10:45 am: "Incarceration, Rendition, Detention Panel"
Darryl Hunt, The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice
Christine Cowger, North Carolina Stop Torture Now
TBA, Farm Labor Organizing Committee

1:15-2:45pm Lunch and Information Fair
Workshops: TBA - Ernestine Friedl Building 107 - Duke University East Campus

Keynote Address
Dylan Rodriguez, "From Slavery's 'Abolition' to 'Genocide Management': the U.S. Prison Regime and the Context for Radical Activism and Scholarship"

Rodriguez is associate professor of Ethnic Studies and interdisciplinary scholar-activist in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Riverside

6:00-7:30pm - Richard White Auditorium - Duke East Campus
Free and open to the public - Parking available on East Campus

The Archive for Human Rights opens the papers of Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer, the progressive American rabbi who became a human rights hero. After being ordained in 1958, Meyer and his family moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to lead Comunidad Bet El, Meyer led a renaissance of Argentina's Jewish community. He also spoke out against the human rights abuses perpetrated by the military junta, and visited and worked for the release of prisoners ("the disappeared") in clandestine jails. Meyer was instrumental in negotiating the release of many people, including Debora Benchoam and crusading newspaper editor Jacobo Timmerman, who later dedicated his book, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number to Meyer. After the return of democracy to Argentina in 1983, Argentine President Raul Alfonsin recruited Meyer to serve on the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, which led an investigation to establish the extent of the abuses suffered under the military junta.

The keynote speaker is Jacobo Timerman's son, Héctor, currently the Argentine Ambassador to the United States. He will be joined by a distinguished panel, including Debora Benchoam and playwright and Duke professor Ariel Dorfman.

Sponsored by the Archives for Human Rights and the Center for Jewish Studies and cosponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center.

A reception and musical performance precedes the event.

5:30 pm - Nasher Museum of Art - Free and open to the public
Parking information at www.nasher.duke.edu/visitus.php#parking

Arrested in 2003 for one episode of outspoken protest and again in 2005 and 2007, Tunç is once more on trial in his native Turkey. Released temporarily, the fearlessly engaged Kurdish recording artist comes to Duke to sing lilting, string-spiked songs about state terror and reconciliation.

Ferhat Tunç's Visiting Artist's Residency is made possible by a Visiting Artist Grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, with additional support from Duke University Center for International Studies, Department of Music, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke Human Rights Center, Asian and Middles Eastern Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Concilium on Southern Africa and the Ethnomusicology Working Group.

8 pm, Nelson Music Room - Duke University - Tickets are $20 or $5 for Duke Students

Tickets through Duke Performances at dukeperformances.duke.edu/programs/artpoliticsnow/tunc.php

Parking information is available at dukeperformances.duke.edu/venues/nelson.php

These two musicians will speak about the intersection of music, human rights and activism.

Ferhat Tunç's Visiting Artist's Residency is made possible by a Visiting Artist Grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Vice Provost for the Arts, with additional support from Duke University Center for International Studies, Department of Music, Duke Islamic Studies Center, Duke Human Rights Center, Asian and Middles Eastern Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Concilium on Southern Africa and the Ethnomusicology Working Group.

12:00-1:15 pm - Room 240, John Hope Franklin Center

Lunch provided - Free and open to the public

Directions and parking information available at www.fhi.duke.edu/contact/?page_id=10

A high school dropout who through incident, accident and circumstance has become a musician, journalist, filmmaker, actor and educator, Lucey is a native-born South African who describes himself as a "multi-instrumentalist, specializing in wind instruments and exotic flutes."

The Danish organization Freemuse, recently commissioned a documentary about Roger's musical life in the late seventies and early eighties called "Stopping the Music". It tells the story about how the security police systematically destroyed his music career. The film has shown in festivals in the US, Denmark, Sweden and will open an exhibition of underground music at the Museum of World Cultures early 2008 in Gothernburg , Sweden.

This concert is a fundraiser for Freemuse.

7:30 pm, Nelson Music Room - Duke University

Parking information is available at dukeperformances.duke.edu/venues/nelson.php

Human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are uncertain about where they stand on the addition of the definition of the crime of aggression, whereby political and military leaders can be held accountable for waging illegal wars, to the statute of the international criminal court. Weisbord is a Duke Law professor who clerked for Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Prior to working at the International Criminal Court, he traveled to Rwanda to study gacaca--community-based genocide trials inspired by an indigenous justice tradition.

Sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center and the Center for International and Comparative Law

12:00-1:15 pm - Room 240, John Hope Franklin Center

Part of the "Wednesday at the Center" series
Lunch provided - Free and open to the public

Parking vouchers for the Medical Center decks are available at the event
Directions and parking information available at www.fhi.duke.edu/contact/?page_id=10

Malaquias Montoya's death penalty work will be exhibited on the Duke University campus beginning March 2009 in the newly converted Friedl Gallery (115 Friedl, East Campus). Montoya is well known in particular for his political poster-work in the 60s, and his most recent works (shows in 2001 and 2008) have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Montoya is a professor at the University of California, Davis in the Department of Art and the Department of Chicana/o Studies. "Pre-Meditated" offers Montoya's consideration of the use of the death penalty in the United States, with 23 charcoal/silkscreen/collage/paintings and 11 text panels. The reception and exhibit are open to the public.

This exhibit is coordinated by the Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South at Duke University, with support from: UNC Chapel Hill Program in Latina/o Studies and the following Duke units: Spanish Service Learning; Duke Human Rights Center; Department of Cultural Anthropology; John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute; and Institute for Critical US Studies.

More information on Montoya and his work is available at: www.malaquiasmontoya.com

Kadivar is the associate professor at the Iranian Institute of Philosophy in Tehran and the visiting professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Born in Iran in 1959, he obtained the certificate of Ijtihad (the highest level in Islamic Studies) from grand Ayatollah H.A. Montazeri at Qom Seminary in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Islamic Philosophy and Theology from Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran in 1999. Kadivar has penned 13 books (in Persian and Arabic) and over 50 articles in Islamic Studies (Philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and political thought). Kadivar's writing on the theology of freedom has been critical of the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Supreme Jurist), an innovation in Shi'te political thought instituted in Iran by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. This controversial theory places temporal and spiritual power in the hands of the most qualified religious scholar. Kadivar and an increasing number of religious scholars in Iran have questioned the religious authenticity of this form of autocratic rule. In 1999, Kadivar was convicted by the Special Court for Clergy and sentenced to eighteen months in prison on charges of having spread false information about Iran's "sacred system of the Islamic Republic" and of helping enemies of the Islamic revolution.

Sponsored by the Duke Islamic Studies Center and cosponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center

4:30-6:00 pm - 136 Social Sciences

Free and open to the public
Parking and directions at maps.duke.edu/building.php?bid=7710

Yvonne Mokgoro obtained the BA Law degree at the North-West University in 1982, the LLB degree two years later, and completed her LLM in 1987 at the same institution. Between 1984 and 1989, she worked as a lecturer in the Department of Jurisprudence at the North-West University and was also appointed as a maintenance officer and public prosecutor in the Mmabatho Magistrate Court. From 1989 to 1990, she attended the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, where she obtained a second Master of Law degree. Between 1992 and 1993, Mokgoro served as an Associate Professor in the Department of Jurisprudence at the University of the Western Cape. From there she moved to the Centre for Constitutional Analysis at the Human Sciences Research Council where she was a specialist researcher in human rights. During this time, she also acted as a part-time lecturer at the University of Pretoria. In 1994, she was appointed as a judge of the Constitutional Court, where she continues to serve. She is one of only three women (the others being Justice Kate O'Regan and Justice Bess Nkabinde) and the first black woman on the first Constitutional Court. During her residency, Justice Mokgoro will engage with Duke humanities and law faculty and students, as well as civil and economic rights activists in North Carolina, in a number of formal and informal events. She will also appear in the following major public programs:

Friday, April 17

4:00-6:00pm, 240 Franklin Center
Law, Liberalism, and Difference: A Public Conversation with Yvonne Mokgoro, Jean Comaroff, & John Comaroff

Presented by the Concilium on Southern Africa

Monday, April 20

4:30-6:00pm, Duke Law School
Center for International & Comparative Law Global Law Workshop
Respodent: Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Duke

The FHI and DHRC would like to acknowledge the support of the following co-sponsors in making this residency possible: the Concilium on Southern Africa, the Dewitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Provost's Common Fund.