Carr Center announces fellows, associates

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) has announced the arrival of the 2001-02 visiting fellows and associates. Each year, the center hosts leading scholars and practitioners in the field of human rights. The Carr Center welcomes 13 extraordinary individuals this academic year.

Among those new to the University are Eitan Felner, the director of B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories); Kelly Askin, a legal adviser to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Sally Engle Merry, an anthropologist from Wellesley College who examines violence against women.

“I’m delighted to welcome this diverse and experienced group to the center and I hope that we will learn from them, they will learn from us, and that the results will benefit the whole KSG and Harvard community,” said Michael Ignatieff, director of the Carr Center.

The 2001-02 Carr Center visiting fellows and associates are as follows:

Kelly Askin is a legal consultant to the United Nations and other world agencies in the areas of humanitarian and criminal law. She was previously acting executive director of the war crimes research office at the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, American University. Askin teaches primarily in the areas of international humanitarian law and gender issues. She is the author of “War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals” (Martinus Nijhoff, 1997) and chief editor of the three-volume treatise “Women and International Human Rights Law”(1999-2001). Her current projects include work on justice and accountability in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, and writing projects concerning international humanitarian law.

Alyssa Bernstein returns to the Carr Center, where she served as a fellow in 2000-01. She is currently an assistant professor of philosophy on leave from Ohio University. This year, Bernstein will examine human rights and gender issues relating to the world AIDS epidemic; the problems of defining and implementing economic, social, and cultural rights; governmental obligations of human rights; the nature of a just system of international law and a just global economy – and the role of human rights in both; and the philosophical arguments in support of universal human rights in a multicultural world.

Antonia Chayes, adjunct lecturer in public policy, is a vice chair and senior adviser of Conflict Management Group. She runs the KSG Executive Program “Initiatives in Conflict Management,” and participates in KSG’s South Africa and Singapore programs. Chayes also directs the Project on International Compliance and Conflict Management at Harvard Law School (HLS). She has served on several presidential and congressional commissions, including the vice president’s White House Aviation Safety and Security Commission. Chayes is the author of a number of books and articles, including “Planning for Intervention: International Cooperation in Conflict Management” (Kluwer Law International, 1999) with the late Abram Chayes.

Diane Curran recently received her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was active in the refugee and immigrants’ rights field, providing legal representation to asylum seekers and detained immigrants, and participating in policy initiatives with the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. At the center, Curran will work in conjunction with the Washington regional office of the UN high commissioner for refugees to carry out a comprehensive study to assess the expedited removal and detention of asylum seekers by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. She will monitor procedures and interview asylum-seekers and officials at airports and detention centers in three to four major ports of entry, and prepare a final report to submit to interested government officials.

Thomas Cushman is professor of sociology at Wellesley College. His areas of study include human rights, comparative sociology, genocide, and social and cultural movements. He is the former editor of Human Rights Review, and the founder and editor of a new periodical, The Journal of Human Rights, which will be published in early 2002. Cushman is currently studying the worldwide anti-globalization movement and writing an interpretive sociological essay on the human rights movement as a global-civil religion. He was recently awarded a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship to explore the relationship between the theory and practice of human rights.

Eitan Felner is the outgoing director of B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. He has researched and written several reports on human rights in the occupied territories. Felner is a former chairperson of Amnesty International (Israel section). He has testified on the human rights situation in the occupied territories before the Israeli Knesset, the German Bundestag, the Italian Senate, the European and Danish parliaments, and the United Nations. At the Carr Center, Felner will address the paradox that underlies the advocacy work of human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Mario Gomez teaches public law, human rights, and feminist legal studies in the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and was the founding director of the university’s legal aid center. He is also a member of the law commission of Sri Lanka. His published work concerns matters of public law, women’s rights, and human rights. Gomez has designed and taught in human rights programs for judges, human rights activists, and members of human rights commissions. Recently, he was involved in developing a training program on economic and social rights for activists in Cambodia and Malaysia.

Lukas Haynes joined the Carr Center as a fellow in February 2001. He was a member of the State Department’s policy planning staff in 2000-01, where he also served as speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Haynes was previously visiting professor of diplomacy and world affairs at Occidental College and Oxfam Great Britian’s regional representative and strategy adviser in the Balkans and West Africa. Haynes has worked on problems of relief and development, conflict transformation, and democratic transition. He is currently working with Michael Ignatieff on a case study for the KSG Center for Public Leadership on efforts to cultivate public support for U.S. leadership in international organizations.

Michael Kraus is the Frederick C. Dirks Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. He has previously held appointments as a research fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs at KSG, Columbia’s School of International Affairs, and as a visiting professor at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He has written and co-edited three books and a score of articles on Soviet, Russian, and East European politics and history. For the past five years, he has chaired the Department of Political Science at Middlebury. Kraus is a member of the Dante Fascell Fellowship Board of the U.S. Department of State. His research project at the Carr Center focuses on transitional justice in post-communist Europe and its impact on democratization.

Sally Engle Merry is professor of anthropology at Wellesley College, where she also co-directs the Peace and Justice Studies Program. Her work in the anthropology of law focuses on the intersections between law and culture, colonialism, and the international human rights system. Her current work examines the regulation of violence against women by the human rights system in the light of inequalities of race, class, gender, and colonialism. She is the author of “Colonizing Hawai’i: The Cultural Power of Law” (Princeton University Press, 2000) and co-editor of “The Possibility of Popular Justice: A Case Study of American Community Mediation” (University of Michigan Press, 1993). She is past-president of the Law and Society Association and the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology.

Adam Taylor recently received his masters in public policy from KSG. As a graduate student, he worked with the Center for International Development and the government of Nigeria to design a political strategy to mobilize resources for a comprehensive HIV/AIDS program in Nigeria. His prior work experience includes conflict resolution with the Carter Center as an Urban Fellow with the New York City Commission to the United Nations. Taylor currently serves on the board of the Jubilee USA Network and the Global AIDS Alliance (GAA).

Anne-Marie Slaughter received her B.A. from Princeton University, an M. Phil. and D. Phil. from Oxford University in international relations, and a J.D. from HLS. Prior to coming to Harvard, she was professor of law and international relations at the University of Chicago Law School. She teaches international law, international relations, international litigation, civil procedure, perspectives on American law, and transnational regulatory cooperation. Slaughter is currently working on a book about the formation of transnational networks of government institutions and the implications of these networks for global governance.

Cheryl Welch received her M.A. and Ph.D. in political theory from Columbia University. She is currently on leave from Simmons College, where she chairs the department of political science and international relations. Welch taught at Harvard for nine years, serving two stints as head tutor of social studies. She has also taught at Columbia, Rutgers, and Tufts. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Bunting Institute, and she has been a fellow in law and political theory at HLS. Welch is the author of “De Tocqueville” (Oxford, 2001) and has written numerous articles on French and British political thought, liberalism, and democracy.

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy is a research, teaching, and training center that examines the effect on human rights of governmental policies and actions, international organizations, and independent actors around the world. The center engages in empirical, philosophical, and conceptual research on the subject of human rights, as well as its relationship with other disciplines.