Protecting Pride: Deval Patrick on the Fight for LGBTQI+ Rights

On today’s episode of Justice Matters co-host Diego Garcia Blum speaks with former Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick about his work as Governor fighting for LGBTQI+ rights, as well as the current state of those rights in the country.  Patrick began his career as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, then went on to serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton administration. From 2007 to 2015, he served as the governor of Massachusetts, the first Black person to serve in the role. During his two terms, Patrick focused on health care, public schools and public infrastructure, and launched initiatives stimulating clean energy and biotechnology, he also signed into law marriage equality rights in the State, as well as protections for transgender rights. He is currently a professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this episode’s conversation they discuss: protecting marriage equality from future rollbacks, how personal relationships inform his perseverance on these issues, this moment politically for LGBTQI+ rights, engaging voters, and his thoughts on coalition building. 

On today’s episode of Justice Matters co-host Mathias Risse speaks with John Shattuck about the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard University and the parallels to Victor Orban’s attacks on the Central European University (CEU) in Hungary.Shattuck is an international legal scholar, diplomat, human rights leader and former university president. From 1984-1993 he held the position at Harvard University of Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs, responsible for Harvard’s relations with government agencies, private institutions and the media. He then served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor under President Clinton from 1993-1998, and was later appointed as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998-2000. In 2009 became the President and Rector of CEU in Budapest, a position he held until 2016.On today’s episode they discuss: the history of CEU and it’s ties to George Soros, the circumstances under which he became President and Rector of CEU, the roots of Victor Orban’s authoritarianism and attack on CEU, similarities and differences between the Orban and Trump administrations clashes with universities, the ideological straitjacket imposed on universities by authoritarians , CEU’s current situation Austria and what remains in Budapest, and his assessment of what effect Trump’s will take on academia in the US. 

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Diego Garcia Blum speaks with Wendy Sherman about her experience speaking to global leaders about LGBTQI+ rights while serving as Under Secretary of State from 2021-2023. In addition to her work at the State Department, she is a Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School as well as a Senior Fellow at the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is currently an MSNBC global affairs contributor and on the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. Her most recent book, “Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence” was published by PublicAffairs in September 2018. On today’s episode they discuss: how she approached conversations with heads of state that have anti-LGBTQI+ laws in their country, what values around this issue went into the Biden administration's foreign policy agenda, how she balanced a country’s domestic cultural and religious issues in her foreign policy work, the rollback of LGBTQI+ rights worldwide, and strategies for activists and leaders working on upholding rights. 

Today on Justice Matters co-host Maggie Gates speaks with Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe, associate professor of literary theory and cultural history with a focus on climate, race, and digital technologies. She teaches in the Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Hunter College in New York after over a decade of research and teaching on Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. The topic of today’s conversation is her new book, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis, a groundbreaking investigation of the Caribbean as both an idyll in the American imagination and a dark laboratory of Western experimentation, revealing secrets to racial and environmental progress that impact how we live today. In this episode Dr. Goffe discusses: how the logic of the plantation led to the climate crisis, european colonization of the caribbean, bringing human histories into the origins of climate crisis, the concept of Eden, the invisible laborers in the colonial labor force, her interdisciplinary approach to these topics, how she thinks about the protagonists in the story of the climate crisis, why she sees this book as reclaiming the environmental histories of people of color, and finally she talks about her storytelling lab, Dark Laboratory. 

In honor of Earth Day last week, we are featuring an episode of Justice Matters with co-host Aminta Ossom on the topic of climate change and human rights. Aminta speaks with Sam Bookman, a scholar of climate change law and human rights, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard’s Project on the Foundations of Private Law, and a Hauser Global Fellow at NYU’s Guarini Center on Environmental Law. He publishes widely on topics of constitutional design, climate litigation, and social movements, as well as environmental human and nonhuman rights. He is an active litigator in his role as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice. In today’s conversation Aminta and Sam discuss: how climate change and human rights overlap, examples of climate action campaigns utilizing the human rights infrastructure, where there are conflicts of interests between climate action and human rights, how to understanding the terms “rights of nature” and “ecocide” and there use, the outcomes of  climate campaigns that have targeted corporate emitters, and a look at cases being litigated around the world and new developments in the field of climate change and human rights. 

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Alina Beskronva, who is currently pursuing a Master's in Public Administration in International Development at the Harvard Kennedy School. Alina is from the city of Mariupol in South-Eastern Ukraine and was in the city during the first few weeks of the Russian attack on Mariupol in 2022. During the siege, the Red Cross described the situation as “apocalyptic” and Ukrainian officials later reported that approximately 25,000 civilians had been killed, though the true number remains unknown, and that at least 95% of the city had been destroyed during the fighting, primarily by large-scale Russian bombardments. On today’s episode, Alina shares her first-hand account of living in Mariupol during the siege and her experience escaping the city that led to her current studies at Harvard.

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates speaks with Darcel Rockett,  senior journalist for the Chicago Tribune whose work centers on narratives for and about populations/communities who need to be heard. An avid documenter of the Black experience, she continually aims to shine a light on the many facets of race and culture. She is currently a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard where she is researching the impact of the Supreme Court’s reversal of affirmative action in higher education and the repercussions of the decision on the future of the Black middle class. In this conversation Darcell discusses the common threads she’s written about across her career, her reporting on the economic disparities in black communities as a result of housing, economic, and incarceration policies, her current examination of the effects of the reversal of affirmative action, the current attack on DEI policies and the historical context of these actions, and why she spends part of her reporting focusing on activists and artists who are doing work do build community in the face of hardship.

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Aminta Ossom speaks with Michael Posner, Professor of Ethics and Finance at the Stern School of Business at NYU and director for the Center for Business and Human Rights. He 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. On today’s episode they discuss a variety of topics surrounding Michael’s new book, “Conscience Incorporated: Pursuing Profits While Protecting Human Rights” including: why he chose to write the book, why he wanted to speak to business leaders at this moment in history, how corporations can pursue profits and social good, shifting from the idea of shareholder primacy to stakeholder primacy, corporate responsibility and the role of regulation in the current global political environment, the obstacles of governments in ensuring fairness and safety, and an insider look at negotiations between governments, companies, and human rights advocates.

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Douglas Johnson, former director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy from 2013-2017 and Lecturer on Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. On the occasion of his retirement from the university he reflects on his work over a long career in human rights including: his multiple decades of work at the Minnesota-based Center for the Victims of Torture, his role in organizing the historic 1970’s grassroots boycott of Nestle with the Infant Formula Action Coalition, the impact of the boycott on informing the due diligence principles of business and human rights, and finally with his retirement from Harvard, Douglass shares some of his key insights that he sought to convey in his decades of teaching. 

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Kasha Nabagesera, Ugandan LGBTQ+ rights activist and Executive Director of Freedom & Roam Uganda (FARUG), about her decades of work. In today’s conversation, Mathias and Kasha discuss: Kasha’s origins as an activist standing up for LGBTQI+ rights, why Uganda is so hostile towards LGBTQI+ people, Bombastic magazine and Kasha’s other work in fighting for rights through digital and print media, Freedom & Roam Uganda’s current initiatives, the current legal situation for LGBTQI+ people in Uganda after the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, threats to her life and other gender rights activists in Uganda, and her international work.