Justice Matters

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Danson Kahyana, a fellow at the Carr Center and Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at Makerere University in Uganda. His recent work includes an examination of the effects of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 on artistic freedom; exploring the representations of the right to healthcare in Ugandan litera...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates talks with Diego Garcia Blum, Program Director of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. His work is dedicated to advocating for the safety and acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals globally, particularly in regions where they face significant risks. Together they disc...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse talks with Gay McDougall, distinguished scholar in residence at Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham University School of Law and member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Professor McDougall has worked for decades on the frontlines of race, gender, and economic exploitation in the Ame...

On today's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Kathryn Sikkink talks with Phuong Pham and Geoff Dancy about the Carr Center’s Transitional Justice Program, the culmination of the program’s research, and the creation of a research repository on the newly released Transitional Justice Evaluation Tools (TJET) website that compiles data on human rights prosecutions, truth commissions, and more around...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse talks with Angela Riley, Chief Justice of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Professor of Law and American Indian Studies at UCLA, about indigenous sovereignty and human rights in the United States. Together they discuss: the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, what sovereignty means for tribes in the US compared to indigenous communities globally...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates is joined by Bevin Croft and Ebony Flint from the Human Services Research Institute for a conversation about the intersections of mental health and human rights in the wake of new guidance on mental health issued in October 2023 by the World Health Organization and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. They discuss the guid...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse talks with Claire Charters who was recently named in the role of Rongomau Taketake to lead work on the Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Charters is a Professor at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law specializing in indigenous peoples’ rights in international and constitutional law. Together the...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates talks with Karla Torres and Catalina Martinez Coral from the Center for Reproductive Rights. On November 8, 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held a landmark hearing on the human rights violations caused by the reversal of Roe v. Wade and the move to ban abortion in the United States. The IACHR is a principle and...

Today on Justice Matters we take a deep dive into the UN Business Human Rights Forum, which just wrapped up its 12th iteration at the end of 2023. Co-host Aminta Ossom attended the forum and interviewed working group member Robert McCorquodale to get some background on the inner workings of the Forum. Ossom also spoke with long-time attendee of the Forum, Corinne Lewis, a legal consultant who has...

On today's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates talks with Jill Collen Jefferson, a civil and human rights lawyer and the founder of Julian, a national organization based in Mississippi that works to attack discrimination in all forms through legal advocacy, organizing, policy, and innovation. With experience on Capitol Hill, at think-tanks, Organizing for Action, the NAACP Legal Defen...

On today’s episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Daniel A. Bell, Chair of Political Theory with the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. They discuss topics from Professor Bell’s most recent book, “Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World” which include: academic freedoms in mainland China vs. Hong Kong, what constitutes a m...

On today's episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Shoshana Zuboff, author of the acclaimed book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power . They discuss a number of topics from her landmark book including: the idea of surveillance capitalism, the harm of disinformation, the future of democracy in the digital era, the implic...

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Maggie Gates, Executive Director of the Carr Center, talks with Sarah Zoen, Associate Director at Pillar Two — an organization that advises businesses on human rights due diligence — about how to navigate shopping for the holidays while keeping human rights and ethical business practices in mind. Together, they offer online resources, best practices, and...

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Kathryn Sikkink, the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, speaks with two veterans of the human rights movement, John Salzberg and Joe Eldridge. John Salzberg was the key staff member working with Representative Don Fraser to hold the first set of hearings about the US and human rights in 1973, and later went on to...

On this episode of Justice Matters, host Aminta Ossom interviews Jeff Vogt, Director of the Rule of Law Program at the Solidarity Center. Vogt is also the co-founder of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network, which brings together over 700 worker rights lawyers from around the globe. In 2022, he was appointed to the International Labor Organization (ILO) Governing Body and serves on t...

On this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse speaks with Kenneth Roth, who led Human Rights Watch as its Executive Director for almost 30 years. Together they discuss the history of Human Rights Watch and Roth's reflections on his tenure, whether human rights still hold power in the world, how to bring about change in countries with abusive governments, difficult case countries, the f...

Justice Matters will return this October. In the meantime, we'd like to share with you a podcast we think you will enjoy by our friends over at Strength & Solidarity. Strength & Solidarity is a podcast about the tools, tactics, and ideas driving and disrupting the human rights movement around the world. Host Akwe Amosu has over 30 episodes of interviews with human rights defenders form around the...

The human rights podcast Justice Matters returns this October with host Maggie Gates, Executive Director of the Carr Center, and a team of Harvard faculty members acting as rotating co-hosts, including Mathias Risse, Aminta Ossom, Rob Wilkinson, and Yanilda Gonzalez.

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 inspire...

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 Dist...

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 n...

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 Americ...

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...

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...

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, au...