The Keeper: A Human Rights Podcast

Episode Notes  Episode 34: The Re-arrest of Rwandan Opposition Leader Victoire Ingabire  On June 17, 2025, Victoire Ingabire was at her home in Kigali, Rwanda, when she received an unusual phone call. She was being summoned by the High Court of Rwanda, and she was required to appear before the court two days later. Victoire was, of course, familiar with the case. It involved supporters of her poli...

Episode Notes  Episode 33: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rachel Miner”  The final episode of this season features a conversation with Rachel Miner, founder and executive director of Bellwether International. Bellwether is a global non-profit taking action to disrupt the cycle of genocide and to create genocide resistant, human rights rights-respecting societies that...

Episode Notes  Episode 32: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Michal Cotler Wunsh”  The fourth episode of this podcast season features a conversation with Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism. She has had an impressive career as a member of the Israeli Knesset, a researcher, policy advisor, advocate and more. Her appointment as Special En...

Episode Notes  Episode 31: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Rushan Abbas  This third episode of our “Women Leading the Way on Freedom of Religion or Belief” season brings you a conversation with Rushan Abbas, one of the most prominent and respected activists for the rights of the Uyghur people. She is founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs. For decad...

Episode Notes  Episode 30: “Women Leading the Way on FoRB” Season – A Conversation with Anila Ali  In this episode, Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett speaks with Anila Ali, founder and president of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council (AMMWEC). She is a fearless voice countering and condemning extremism, encouraging religious plurality, taking on taboo subjects, and working to b...

It’s appropriate that we’re releasing the first episode of this season this week, during the fifth annual International Religious Freedom Summit. It’s an incredible gathering of civil society advocates, activists, experts, academics, government leaders, parliamentarians, and more from across the globe – all focused on advancing the fundamental right to freedom of religion, conscience, or belief. ...

Coming Soon: “Women Leading the Way on Freedom of Religion or Belief” Freedom of religion, conscience and belief is a fundamental human right – it’s foundational to so many other rights that form the basis of peaceful, prosperous and free societies. But it is too often overlooked and increasingly under threat around the world. A growing global movement is now shining a spotlight on this human righ...

This will be the fifth and final episode of our Sports & Rights season. Over the course of this series, we've taken an in-depth look at what happens when the worlds of sports and human rights collide. We've brought you conversations with Olympians, activists, journalists, academics, and fans. We've tried to unpack some of the stickiest questions around the intersection of sports...

Episode Notes   In the last episode of our Sports & Rights season, we dove into the subject of sportswashing and the nefarious use of sports as soft power. At the end of that episode, we posed a few questions: Who plays a role in ensuring that sports aren’t just about profits over power? Who can guarantee that human rights get their due in these huge, lucrative businesses? In this episode, we...

In this episode of our Sports & Rights season, we take an in-depth look at a topic we touched on in the first episode – sportswashing. We speak to journalists, human rights advocates, and academics to help unpack what this term means and why it matters. We also delve into some of the most successful examples of sportswashing, ranging from ancient Egypt right up to the present day. We examine t...

When we first kicked off our Sports & Rights podcast season, we were in the midst of what is arguably the biggest and most beloved sporting event on the planet – the 2022 FIFA World Cup, held in Qatar. Now, we find ourselves just weeks away from the Opening Ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics – the perfect time to restart our examination of the intersection of human rights and sports! In the c...

On April 11, 2024, we are re-releasing our 2021 episode “The Democracy Activist Putin Wants Dead.” There is a very somber reason for this re-release. This date marks the two-year anniversary of Vladimir Kara-Murza’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of “public dissemination of deliberately false information.” Vladimir, one of the boldest and most eloquent Russian opposition figures, committed the...

The Keeper’s new Sports & Rights season kicks off with something a little different – a joint episode hosted by Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett and Tim Horgan, Executive Director of the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire and host of the Global in the Granite State podcast. Katrina and Tim join forces for a dynamic conversation about the complex and often problematic ways in which the world of spo...

Over the past several weeks, we have watched Russia’s unprovoked attacks on the people of Ukraine with horror, outrage, and a deep sense of fear for what this will mean for freedom and democracy in Europe – and the world. We have sought out trusted experts on the situation to help us better understand what the future may hold, for both Ukraine and Russia. In this special episode of The Keeper, we...

On the final episode of our 7-part Rule of Law season, we return to the subject of the state of the rule of law right here in America. We hear from our 2020 Lantos Human Rights Prize Laureate Bryan Stevenson, who has been a tireless advocate for applying the rule of law equally and fairly in the United States, regardless of race or economic status, as well as for dealing more honestly and openly w...

On this season of The Keeper, we’ve heard harrowing first-hand accounts of what happens in a country when its government or leaders choose to disregard the rule of law; freedom, justice and human rights all tend to be casualties. Oftentimes, the oppressors and abusers face few consequences for their actions…but not always. When it comes to the worst of the worst crimes, there is an international i...

For the fifth episode of our Rule of Law Season, we speak with journalist and author Anjan Sundaram to help us understand what is happening with the rule of law in Rwanda. The country is often held up as a democratic success story in Africa, as it has achieved stability and prosperity over the last 25 years since the horrific genocide of 1994. But Anjan explains that the real story is very differe...

Vladimir Kara-Murza has spent the better part of the last two decades fighting for the rule of law in Russia as a journalist, filmmaker and opposition politician. But in Putin’s Russia, this is a very dangerous line of work. Not once, but twice, he has been the victim of a poison attack and barely escaped with his life. Just last weekend, he was arrested and detained by the Russian government duri...

In this episode, we focus on a part of the world that has become one of the front lines of the fight to uphold the Rule of Law – Hong Kong. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has been imposing increasingly strict measures on the once autonomous and democratic Hong Kong, designed to erode that autonomy. The response has not come from the powerful or well-connected members of Hong Kong soc...

On the first episode of this Rule of Law season, we talked about the rule of law as a “a government of laws and not men”. Our guest on this episode, Professor Irwin Cotler, has his own shorthand for the rule of law: “the pursuit of justice”. If anyone in this world is intimately familiar with the tireless, unrelenting, undaunted pursuit of justice, it is Irwin Cotler – an accomplished academic, re...

This episode kicks off our new season, where we will be exploring the significance of three simple words: Rule of Law. But what does that phrase actually mean? Is it an abstraction? An impossible ideal? Or something real and practical that holds democratic societies together? To help answer these questions and more, we spoke to one of America’s preeminent legal scholars on the rule of law, Profess...

The new season of The Keeper will focus on three simple, but powerful, words: Rule of Law. When we decided to make this the focus of our season, we never imagined that the start of 2021 would bring this concept to the very forefront of public discourse. From the arrest of Alexey Navalny and mass protests in Russia, to China's brutal crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong, to the violen...

The final episode of this special Solidarity Sabbath season on anti-Semitism is being released on World Humanitarian Day. The United Nations calls this day a global celebration of people helping people. There are numerous examples of humanitarians throughout history who have given so much of themselves to fight anti-Semitism or to protect the Jewish people. But not every humanitarian’s contributio...

This episode, the fourth in the special Solidarity Sabbath season, takes a deeper look at an area where anti-Semitism, and hate of all forms, is spreading in alarming ways – the internet. Katrina Lantos Swett speaks with Yigal Carmon, President and co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). For more than two decades, MEMRI has done ground-breaking work, researching the most di...

The Holocaust, or Shoah in Hebrew, refers to the World War II genocide of 6 million European Jews. This was unequivocally the most extreme and horrific example of anti-Semitism the world has ever seen. Yet, somehow Jewish survivors of this atrocity, including the Lantos Foundation’s namesake Tom Lantos, were able to emerge from this dark time with their spirits unbroken and with a deep sense of th...