Justice Matters

On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Dr. Leslie Alexander about the history of Black Internationalism and its ties to today’s global Black Lives Matter movement. Her newest book, Fear of a Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States, examines how the Haitian Revolution and the emergence of Haiti as a sovereign Black nation inspired the birth of Black internationalist consciousness in the United States. Alexander is the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University. A specialist in early African American and African Diaspora history, she is the author of African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 and the co-editor of three additional volumes. A recipient of several prestigious fellowships, including the Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship, Alexander is the immediate Past President of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), and is an Executive Council member of the National Council for Black Studies (NCBS).

Where do universal human rights begin? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Professor Martha Davis about local movements and human rights cities. Davis teaches constitutional law, US human rights advocacy, and professional responsibility at Northeastern Law School, where she is a Faculty Director for the Program for Human Rights and the Global Economy. A Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, she is also a member of the expert committee for HumanRight2Water, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that advocates for water and human rights. She is currently a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

What is critical race theory and why is it under attack? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman discusses critical race theory with Dr. Victor Ray, Carr Center Fellow and F. Wendell Miller Associate Professor at the University of Iowa. Together they explore the related topics of structural racism and intersectionality, and how race shapes social processes typically considered race neutral. Dr. Ray is also a Nonresident Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. As a public scholar, he has published commentary in the Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Newsweek, and the Boston Review.

What is black witnessing, and how does it connect to movements for racial equity and justice? Can capturing a moment shape a movement? On this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman speaks with Dr. Allissa Richardson about the power of communication on social and racial justice. Dr. Richardson is an Associate Professor of Journalism at USC Annenberg School. She researches how African Americans use social and mobile media to produce innovative forms of journalism, especially in times of crisis. She’s the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones and the New Protest #Journalism,” which explores the lives of 15 journalist activists who have documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter. Dr. Richardson is a Carr Center Fellow for the coming academic year.

What is the responsibility of businesses to uphold human rights? What is the role of civil society to hold businesses accountable? And how well is the human rights movement equipped to deal with the emerging challenges of the digital age? In this episode of Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman discusses these questions with Mike Posner, Professor at the Stern School of Business and director for the Center for Business and Human Rights at NYU. Posner served in the Obama Administration from 2009-2013 as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor, and from 1978-2009 Posner led Human Rights First.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dara Kay Cohen, a Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her research spans the field of international relations including: international security, civil war and the dynamics of violence, and gender and conflict. On this episode they discuss rape during contemporary civil wars, research methods for collecting qualitative data about sexual violence and the ethics of research, her findings about how gender equality could help to avoid civil war, and how documenting war crimes in Ukraine may lead to accountability after the war. Cohen explores these topics further in her award winning books, Rape During Civil War and Lynching and Local Justice: Legitimacy and Accountability in Weak States.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Yanilda María González, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School who researches police violence and how it relates to democracy and citizenship, with a focus on Latin America. In this conversation they discuss how to facilitate having dialogue around police reform with people from different backgrounds, authoritarianism and policing, civil society’s role in holding politicians and police accountable, race and how policing determines how you have access to rights, and police corruption and how it relates to police violence in both the United States and Latin America.

How does a leader strive for social justice for their community and country? Join us this month on Justice Matters as host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women from 2013-2021, and the first woman to hold the position of Deputy President of South Africa. From her background as a teacher in South Africa and as an active part of the anti-aparteid struggle, through to her positions in the first democratically elected government of South Africa and later the UN, Dr. Mlambl-Ngcuka discusses her work fighting for the rights of women and children throughout her multifaceted career.

This month on Justice Matters, host Sushma Raman talks with Dr. Sima Samar about the situation in Afghanistan, the status of women and girls in the country, and the role and responsibility of the international community. Dr. Samar is a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement and has held the positions of Special Envoy for the President of Afghanistan, State Minister for Human Rights and International Affairs, Chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commision, and Minister of Women’s Affairs as one of only two women in the transition government. She is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a Scholar at Risk at Harvard.

For this month’s episode of Justice Matters, we’re digging into our archives to present a special episode for Black History Month. Featuring excerpts from three conversations with a range of speakers from academia and activism, our guests discuss the historical legacy of enslavement, the periods of progress followed by rollbacks, the promise and peril of the current moment, and how we build more inclusive and just societies for the future. Join our host Sushma Raman as she speaks with Wade Henderson, interim CEO of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, Dr. Keisha Blain, award-winning historian and author of “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Struggle for Global Freedom,” and Dr. Megan Ming Francis, author of “Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State.”