Dialogues for Common Ground: American Identity & Connecticut’s Civic Reconstruction

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About the Program:

Democracy is a Connecticut tradition. The “Constitution State” has for centuries been a place of evolving civic life, and has often inspired and informed the national approach to the rights of individuals and the electoral process. The 21st century brings new challenges and opportunities to innovative political engagement: locally, the “Land of Steady Habits” is a racially and ethnically diverse, economically unequal, and politically decentralized state; nationally, our democracy is under pressure from polarization, disinformation, and even violence. How might Connecticut communities harness the state’s long history of political innovation and reconstruct robust civic practices to address our present moment and look to the future?

The “American Identity and Connecticut’s Civic Reconstruction” program brings the conversation back to first principles, to the founding of the American democratic experiment, and aims to foster meaningful and informed discussion around the values that form the basis of our nation. In doing so, it encourages everyone to learn more about our shared history and to value and participate in our democracy. These online participatory conversations will be run on the “Encounters” dialogue model; read more about it here.

Join us!

You are warmly invited to take part in a series of interactive explorations of critical documents of American identity and their role in our lives today: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

This program aims to foster meaningful and informed discussion around the values that form the basis of our national experience by bringing the conversation back to first principles, to the founding of the American democratic experiment. In doing so, it encourages us to learn more about our shared history and to value and participate in our democracy. To participate, please register below.

March 22 – The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence
Hosted by Democracy & Dialogues Initiative
Tuesday, March 22. 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Register in advance for this event:
https://uconn-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEuceGhrj0oHdGDL_I83vMxzxBLvd4Ay-iv

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the dialogue.

April 5 – The Constitution

The Constitution
Hosted by the Old Connecticut State House
Tuesday, April 5. 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Register in advance for this event:
https://uconn-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvcOGoqDIjGdwOTaLCSltZQMhFIgxsYuWG

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the dialogue.

May 3 – The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights
Hosted by the Hartford Public Library
Tuesday, May 3. 6:00-8:00 pm ET

Register here for this event:
https://uconn-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEqc-GqrDsoHdN1j6x8PHigbGDPXPz6Srxi

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the dialogue.

The Encounters Series is dedicated to fostering unexpected conversations around divisive issues and obscure knowledge. The program dives deeply into subjects that are of interest to the Greater Hartford community through facilitated, small-group dialogues followed by a question-and-answer style conversation with UConn faculty and community partners.

The Democracy & Dialogues Initiative is part of Dodd Human Rights Impact and supported by the Office of Global Affairs, the Office of the Provost, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Humanities Institute, UConn Extension, and the Division of Student Affairs’ Parent's Fund.

Russia’s Crackdown on Religious Minorities, Journalists, & Human Rights Defenders

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Tuesday, March 8, 2022
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Virtual Event

About This Event:

Join us for a discussion on the escalating persecution of religious minorities, journalists, and human rights defenders currently under way in Russia. Over the past several years, Russian authorities have labeled Jehovah’s Witnesses as “extremist” organizations and used anti-extremism laws to launch a campaign of arrests, harassment, and intimidation. During this event, we’ll explore the history and current reality of this case of religious persecution and hear first-hand accounts from community members.

Dr. Zoe Knox of the University of Leicester will deliver the keynote address, followed by reflections from targeted members of the Russian Jehovah's Witness community. Glenn Mitoma, Director of Dodd Impact, will moderate.

Keynote Speaker:

Zoe Knox is Associate Professor of Modern Russian History at the University of Leicester. Her research explores issues of religious tolerance and intolerance in the modern world, in Russia and beyond. Her publications include Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism (Routledge, 2005); Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Secular World: From the 1870s to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); and Voices of the Voiceless: Religion, Communism, and the Keston Archive (Baylor University Press, 2019), co-edited with J. deGraffenried.

Panelists:

Dmitri Antsybor, Kirill Kravchenko, & Aleksandr Tsvetkov

Moderator:

Glenn Mitoma, Director of Dodd Impact

This event is virtual and will be hosted on Zoom. Click the link above to register to attend. This event may be recorded.

Using International Human Rights to Counter Urban Displacement and Advance Rights in Cities

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Friday, March 4, 2022
12:30pm - 2:00pm
Virtual Event

About This Event:

In the second meeting of the Economic & Social Rights Group for Spring 2022, we welcome Jackie Smith, Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Smith will discuss a new white paper, Pittsburgh’s Affordable Housing Crisis: Is Privatization the Solution?, which she wrote with colleagues involved in Pittsburgh’s Human Rights City Alliance. She will discuss how the project emerged from the work of a diverse alliance of human rights organizers and how it contributes to ongoing local and translocal movement-building to advance housing as a human right. It also demonstrates important roles for networks of university- and neighborhood-based activists to play in advancing human rights in cities and communities. The white paper is available to read here, courtesy of Smith and her colleagues.

Presenter:

Jackie Smith’s research focuses on how globalization impacts people and communities, and how social movements for the environment, health, and economic justice have advanced transformative struggles. She has documented long-term trends in transnational social movement organizations and coalitions, in addition to research on connections between global politics and activism in cities and communities. Smith is currently engaged in participatory research with Pittsburgh and with national human rights organizers and engaged in work to connect municipalities with United Nations human rights work.

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This event is virtual and will be hosted on Zoom. Click the link above to register to attend. The event will be recorded.

The Economic & Social Rights Group (ESRG) is an interdisciplinary monthly gathering of faculty and graduate students who meet to share ongoing research and to discuss current scholarship around economic and social rights. It is the central to the mission of the Research Program on Economic & Social Rights.

The Research Program on Economic & Social Rights brings more than a dozen UConn faculty together with over 30 affiliated scholars from across the United States and Canada. Together, we have generated numerous graduate and undergraduate courses, several edited volumes, multiple co-authored articles, and the National Science Foundation-funded Socio-Economic Rights Fulfillment Index (SERF Index).

Business, Human Rights, & the Triple Planetary Crisis

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Thursday, March 10, 2022
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Virtual Event

About This Workshop:

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. Read below for the abstract of Prof. Sara Seck's upcoming paper, the focus of this workshop. The full paper is available to view and download below in advance of the workshop.

According to the United Nations, the world is facing a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature (biodiversity) loss, and pollution and waste, with the most egregious consequences felt by those least responsible. These crises are also intertwined: nature-based solutions are promoted as climate change solutions even as heat domes fuel forest fires; extraction of minerals for green energy solutions negatively impacts biodiversity and creates pollution and waste; and carbon major companies are also among the largest producers of plastic pollution. International human rights law is increasingly grappling with environmental rights and responsibilities, as evidenced by the work of special rapporteurs on the environment and on toxic substances, among others. This paper will consider how business and human rights instruments could help to guide solutions to triple planetary crisis that are attentive to the need to reduce overconsumption by the rich while supporting equity and resilience of those most vulnerable to planetary crisis.

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Presenter:

Prof. Sara Seck, Dalhousie University

Discussant:

Prof. Chiara Macchi, Wageningen University

This event will not be recorded.

This event is sponsored by the Business and Human Rights Initiative, a partnership founded by Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, and the Human Rights Institute. 

Tracking Rights Fulfillment in the Human Rights Measurement Initiative

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Thursday, February 24, 2022
3:00pm - 4:30pm EST
Virtual Event

About This Event:

In this month’s workshop, we feature the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), co-founded by Susan Randolph, Emerita Professor of Economics at UConn.

HRMI is a global collaborative venture between human rights practitioners, researchers, academics, and other supporters to measure performance on 13 key human rights metrics internationally. In this workshop, the HRMI team will provide an overview of the methodology underpinning their innovative metrics, demonstrate the rights tracker (a key tool of their impact strategy), and highlight several new endeavors.

Presenters:

Anne-Marie Brook, Co-Founder and Vision & Strategy Lead (based at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Institute in New Zealand)

Annie Watson, Children's Rights Co-Lead (based at Middle Georgia State University)

Chad Clay, Co-Founder and Methodology Research and Design Lead (based at University of Georgia)

Elizabeth Kaletski, Children's Rights Co-Lead (based at Ithaca College)

Matt Rains, Civil and Political Rights Lead (based at University of Georgia)

Stephen Bagwell, Economic and Social Rights Team (based at University of Missouri-St. Louis)

Susan Randolph, Co-founder and Economic and Social Rights Lead (based in Connecticut and Oregon

This event is virtual and will be hosted on Zoom. Click the link above to register to attend. The workshop will be recorded.

This event is sponsored by the Human Rights Research and Data Hub (HuRRD) at the Human Rights Institute. The Hub seeks to advance human rights research at UConn by supporting faculty and student projects and providing students the opportunity to develop research and data analysis skills that will advance their careers after graduation.

Business & Human Rights in an Unequal World: A Genealogy

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Friday, February 24, 2023
2:00pm - 3:15pm
Online Event - Zoom

About This Workshop:

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. Below find the abstract for a preview of the paper. 

Business & Human Rights in an Unequal World: A Genealogy provides the first monograph explaining the emergence of ‘Business and Human Rights’ as a juridical field. Drawing upon fifty years of United Nations archives, the book argues that the BHR field emerges following the culmination of attempts by scholars, civil servants and activists to radicalize states' responses to inequality in the international legal order by re-casting the corporation as a vehicle of social change. The book argues that the BHR field has flourished by giving rise to a legal sensibility it calls ‘embedded pragmatism’. While pragmatism retains some of the radical sentiments of past attempts at redressing inequality through regulating corporate conduct, it fixates jurists attention on the 'art of the possible'. This has the effect of maintaining the central dynamics of existing corporate processes and results in the BHR Field providing a response to human rights abuse that is short-term in its approach, crisis-responsive, and based upon a theory of change that is incremental. The book then proposes a new theory of embedded intersectionality and invites scholars in the field to re-think its parameters by attenuating to human rights abuse in a manner that is historically-situated, proactive, and responsive to change that is increasingly exponential.

Professor Kelsall will discuss the central argument of her work and draw upon case studies of exponential change to illustrate her new theory.

Presenter:

Prof. Michelle Kelsall,
SOAS University of London

Discussant:

Prof. Tara Van Ho,
University of Essex Law School

This workshop will be hosted on Zoom. Please register to receive the Zoom information and paper. The workshop will not be recorded.

This event is sponsored by the Business and Human Rights Initiative, a partnership of Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, & Human Rights Institute. 

Human Rights, Multinational Enterprises, & Legitimacy

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Wednesday, March 1, 2023
12:00pm - 1:15pm
Online Event - Zoom

About This Workshop:

The Business and Human Rights Workshop is dedicated to the development and discussion of works-in-progress and other non-published academic research. Below find the abstract for a preview of the paper. 

This paper attempts to explain why, in similar contexts, multinational enterprises (MNEs) respond differently to human rights questions, and why external audiences appear to tolerate these differences. Our explanation focuses on the perceived legitimacy of MNE human rights actions. This approach recognizes that organizations are actors that make legitimacy assessments, rather than mere legitimacy objects. We conceptualize organizational human rights attitudes and reasons for action, and we show how the two interact. We relate the norms that are used in legitimacy judgments, and the way that they are interpreted in different contexts, to different MNE human rights attitudes. Our analysis yields new predictions of the factors that might lead MNEs to adopt active, passive, or non-engagement human rights attitudes.

Presenter:

Prof. Rita Mota,
ESADE Business School

Discussant:

Prof. Harry Van Buren,
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

This workshop will be hosted on Zoom. Please register to receive the Zoom information and paper. The workshop will not be recorded.

This event is sponsored by the Business and Human Rights Initiative, a partnership of Dodd Human Rights Impact, the UConn School of Business, & Human Rights Institute. 

Human Rights Film+ Series: Tacheles – The Heart Of The Matter

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Monday, March 28, 2022
3:30pm - 4:45pm
Virtual Film Discussion

Schedule:

Please watch the film before the discussion. A link to view the film will be sent to registrants in advance. Register to receive the link.

3:30pm - Discussion with filmmaker Jana Matthes, Sebastian Wogenstein (Center for Judaic Studies), and James Coltrain (Digital Media & Design).
Yaar Harell, the main protagonist of the film, will also join us. Moderated by Heather Elliott-Famularo (Digital Media & Design). 

This event has been rescheduled to March 28, 2022 from November 16, 2021.

About the Film:

The Human Rights Film+ Series presents Tacheles - The Heart of the Matter, written and directed by Jana Matthes & Andrea Schramm (Germany 2020).

Synopsis: In this moving documentary, we follow the story of Yaar, a young Israeli living in Berlin who is rebelling against his Jewish identity. He accuses his father of suffering from the Holocaust although he never experienced it firsthand. In order to face his own family history, Yaar decides to engage with the Holocaust in a new way: via a computer game. Together with his two German friends, he creates a 1940s Germany in which Jews can defend themselves and Nazis can act humanely. His father is shocked. “Tacheles – The Heart of the Matter” shows how the trauma of the survivors affects the third generation. By blurring the truth and switching the roles of victims and perpetrators - can anyone cope with their own history? Is reconciliation possible with a Computer Game?

Co-sponsors: Human Rights Institute, Dodd Impact, Digital Media and Design, Center for Judaic Studies & Contemporary Jewish Life

Rights Beyond Words: Mapping Human Rights Scholar-Organization Partnerships

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Wednesday, February 16, 2022
2:00pm - 3:30pm
Virtual Event

Presenters:

Zehra Arat is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at UConn. She studies human rights, with an emphasis on women’s rights, as well as processes of democratization, globalization, and development.

Shareen Hertel is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at UConn, jointly appointed with the Human Rights Institute. Her research focuses on changes in transnational human rights advocacy, with a focus on labor and economic rights issues.

Overview:

For this February edition of the HRI Colloquium Series, we will consider NGO-Scholar Engagement, the topic of an upcoming paper from Zehra Arat & Shareen Hertel.

Abstract:

For a sneak preview of their talk, here is the abstract of their forthcoming work: "For many human rights scholars, human rights is more than intellectual curiosity; it is the motivation for their work. They try to use their research and expertise to improve human rights conditions and work with policy makers and advocacy groups. This paper explores the complexities of partnerships between scholars and human rights organizations and groups (HROGs). Focusing primarily on the experience of social science and humanities scholars with a range of HROGs, we identify areas of tension, as well as the political implications of such engagement. The paper thus marks a critical step toward developing a more formal typology of such relationships that can be used to further explore variation in human rights outcomes stemming from such collaboration."

This event is virtual and will be hosted on Zoom. Click the link above to register to attend. The Colloquium will be recorded.

Resist or Embrace: Environmental Human Rights Advocacy at International Human Rights Organizations

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Friday, February 18, 2022
12:00pm - 1:30pm
Virtual Event

Presenter:

Bi Zhao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Whitworth University. She specializes in international relations and methodology, with a substantive focus on democratic legitimacy in global governance, non-state actors, and international environmental politics.

About this Event:

In the first of three Economic & Social Rights Group events planned for this spring, Dr. Bi Zhao will present her research entitled “Resist or embrace: environmental human rights advocacy at international human rights organizations."

-Prakash Kashwan & Shareen Hertel (ESRG Co-Directors)

This event is virtual and will be hosted on Zoom. Click the link above to register to attend. The event will be recorded.

The Economic & Social Rights Group (ESRG) is an interdisciplinary monthly gathering of faculty and graduate students who meet to share ongoing research and to discuss current scholarship around economic and social rights. It is the central to the mission of the Research Program on Economic & Social Rights.

The Research Program on Economic & Social Rights brings more than a dozen UConn faculty together with over 30 affiliated scholars from across the United States and Canada. Together, we have generated numerous graduate and undergraduate courses, several edited volumes, multiple co-authored articles, and the National Science Foundation-funded Socio-Economic Rights Fulfillment Index (SERF Index).