Author: Branzell, Alex

Stigma & Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Black September, Ethnic Enclaves, & New Venture Performance in Jordan

Posted on April 1, 2022April 26, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

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. Please register for a link to read Prof. Ryan Cole's paper, the focus of this workshop.

Prior research on immigrant entrepreneurship has largely overlooked the difficulties faced by stigmatized immigrant groups and the strategies that such immigrant groups can undertake to improve new venture performance. To address this issue, we examine immigrant entrepreneurship in Jordan. We find that stigmatized immigrant entrepreneurs in Jordan are more negatively affected by government practices than native and non-stigmatized immigrant entrepreneurs. Moreover, we find that stigmatized entrepreneurs can partially mitigate these effects by founding their ventures in established ethnic enclaves where entrepreneurs can access brokers with social ties that can help overcome discrimination. Empirically, we examine this phenomenon using data on new venture performance of 8756 entrepreneurs in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from 2003 to 2013 and supplemented with 60 qualitative interviews.

Theatre & Human Rights: The Politics of Dramatic Form

Posted on April 1, 2022April 22, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Join us for a presentation of research that develops a theoretical foundation and methodology for how theatre and human rights intersect, and demonstrates how various dramatic forms interrogate human rights questions from within the specific perspective of Theatre as a discipline. While human rights research and programming often employ the arts as "representations" of atrocities--abusive political, social and economic practices--this study focuses on the various types of dramatic form and structure as uniquely positioned to investigate important questions in human rights theory and practice. The use of Theatre will be positioned as a method of examination rather than emphasize the more limited, however important purposes the arts serve to raise consciousness or offer commentary that accompany other, often considered more primary, modes of analysis.

New for 2022, the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights explores how the arts can promote the full exercise of human rights and the consolidation of a democratic culture. The arts not only make human rights visible. They also advance democratic thinking as they help us imagine new futures and open unique spaces for dialogue and debate, ushering us into novel modes of experience that provide concrete grounds for rethinking our relationship to one another. Thus, the arts can act as a powerful means of sustaining individual and collective reflection on human rights, and of linking individual and collective public experience, social belonging and citizenship.

Our guiding concepts:

Art makes visible human rights, and their violation, helping us combat injustice;
Art strengthens mutual recognition, opening new spaces for dialogue and debate;
Art forges new potential futures, helping us envision a more moral and just society.

Human Rights Close to Home Youth Action Summit

Posted on March 28, 2022May 17, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

We're pleased to announce the first annual Human Rights Close to Home Youth Action Summit!

We are offering Connecticut students an opportunity to participate in the Youth Action Summit, a major event within the Human Rights Close to Home initiative, which aims to promote youth involvement and advocacy in human rights around Connecticut. This Youth Action Summit is created and led by the Human Rights Close to Home Youth Advisory team. This is a one-day educational space for young activists and allies from around CT to come together as a community. Our goal is to provide resources and support to all attendees so that they can continue fighting for their human rights in their communities long after the Summit concludes.

Throughout the Youth Action Summit, students will participate in workshops and meet a wide range of speakers, from professional human rights advocates to fellow youth activists. Whether you are a student or educator, we welcome you to participate.

At this time, the Youth Action Summit is open to Connecticut high school students only.
If you are an educator and are in need of transportation assistance, please contact Dr. Ian McGregor at ian.mcgregor@uconn.edu

1) Youth In Action: Robert F. Kennedy said “Each time a man stands up for an idea, or strikes out against injustice, or acts to improve the lots of others, he sends a tiny ripple of hope …those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression…” The actions of individuals, no matter how small, matter in creating a world in which the rights of others are protected.

2) Intersectional Human Rights: Human Rights are universal, yet everyone undergoes and brings to the table their own unique experiences and identities. Supporting human rights means more than just acknowledging, it means understanding and living out these intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability and more everyday.

3) Defenders and Leaders Close To Home: Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that unless human rights have meaning in the “little places, close to home,” they have little meaning anywhere. Human Rights are not “over-there” issues and have as much meaning in the state of Connecticut as they do in countries on the other side of the world.

4) Youth Teaching Youth: Students are frequently the best teachers! The sharing of student experiences contributes to the development of a more complex world view for a youthful generation. Engaging with the experiences of your peers helps to create a more knowledgeable and engaged generation of activists!

5) Get Up, Stand Up For Your Rights: It’s easy to lose faith these days. Looking for the bright spots amongst the dark; those people, groups or programs speaking and standing up to say “We will” and “We can” is important in creating a more just, equitable, human rights friendly world.

Kevin Maysonet, Manchester High School
Emily Aubrey, Conard High School
Trisha Chennuru, Brookfield High School
Casey Pratt, Brookfield High School
Skylar Mattice, Brookfield High School
Shirin Unvala, Center for Global Studies, Brien McMahon High School
Aureliana Brown, Manchester High School
Lydia Griffin, Conard High School
Kyra Cummins, Brookfield High School
Bella De Souza, University of Connecticut
Henry Avery, Center for Global Studies, Brien McMahon High School
Parisa Arastu, Center for Global Studies, Brien McMahon High School
Hayat Yussuf, Brookfield High School
Katie McCluney, University of Connecticut
Samantha Gove, University of Connecticut

Human Rights Close to Home (HRCH) engages educators and youth in the development and implementation of human rights education for civic action. We empower teachers with the knowledge, skills, values, and relationships to become expert human rights and civics educators. We foster youth leadership through experiential learning opportunities that have a direct impact on our youth and their communities.

Human Rights Close to Home is a program of Dodd Impact, a part of the Human Rights Institute at UConn.

Coupling & Coupling Compromises in Supplier Factories’ Responses to Worker Activism

Posted on March 1, 2022June 5, 2023 by Branzell, Alex

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. Jodi Short's upcoming paper, the focus of this workshop.

Many companies have adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies in response to activist pressure, but ensuring the implementation of these policies is challenging. Recognizing the paucity of research on the effect of contentious activism on companies’ coupling of CSR policies and practices in the private politics and (de)coupling literatures, we posit that companies engage in “coupling compromises” when faced with such institutional pressure—improving their practices and more tightly coupling them with CSR policies in the domain contested by activists, but relaxing the coupling of policy and practice in competing CSR domains. Furthermore, we theorize that the nature and extent of coupling compromises can be explained by the interaction of activism with organizational structures that construct managerial perceptions of issue salience and internal frictions to change. We test our theory in the context of global supply chain factories’ compliance with CSR policies on working conditions when they face local worker activism. Analyzing 3,495 audits of 2,352 factories in 114 Chinese cities from 2012 to 2015, we find that worker activism over wages-and-benefits issues pushes factories to improve their wages-and-benefits practices and couple them more tightly with CSR policies, but these factories concurrently loosen the coupling between policy and practice in the domain of occupational health and safety. Both effects are stronger in factories with organizational structures that foreground the salience of wages and benefits issues and mitigate friction to changing organizational practices. These findings make significant contributions to the literatures on private politics, (de)coupling, and global supply chain labor practices.

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

Posted on March 1, 2022March 21, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

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.

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.

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.

Environmental Rights in Cultural Context – Perspectives from Law and Anthropology

Posted on March 1, 2022March 23, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Environmental rights, such as the right to a healthy or clean environment, are experiencing increasing recognition within domestic constitutions as well as international human rights instruments and institutions. In parallel, more ecocentric approaches promote so-called rights of nature. Using methods of law and anthropology, this talk will assess to what extent such rights respond to environmental stress of local communities exposed, for instance, to large scale mining, hydro dams or climate change.

Dirk Hanschel studied law at the Universities of Marburg and Heidelberg, Germany, as well as the London School of Economics (LSE), before taking his doctoral/post-doctoral degrees at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He furthermore holds a Master of Comparative Law (Mannheim/Adelaide). After working as a reader at the University of Aberdeen for around two years, he became a professor of German, European and International Public Law at the University of Halle, Germany, in 2015. His research focuses inter alia on topics of environmental law and human rights, topics of comparative constitutional law (such as federalism), the law of international organizations, as well as law and anthropology. In 2019 he became a Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, where he conducts an interdisciplinary project on "Environmental Rights in Cultural Context", together with a group of doctoral and post-doctoral scholars. In autumn 2021 he was appointed Martin Flynn Global Law Professor at UConn Law School.

Suffer the Children: A Theoretical Foundation for the Human Rights of the Child

Posted on March 1, 2022August 16, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

Join us for a talk by longtime member of the Research Program on Economic and Social Rights Richard P. Hiskes, whose widely acclaimed new book addresses the centrality of social and economic rights within a broader discussion of why taking children's human rights seriously turns conventional human rights theory upside down. The book establishes the theoretical foundation for prioritizing social and economic rights in the name of children’s human rights. Read more about the book here.

Richard P. Hiskes is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. As a founding faculty member of the Human Rights Institute (HRI) he served as Associate Director and Director of Undergraduate Programs, including the Human Rights Major. He was Editor of the Journal of Human Rights for many years, and twice selected as President of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

He is the author of many books and articles in political theory generally and human rights theory in particular. His human rights work focuses on the theory of environmental human rights and on the human rights of children. His 2009 book, The Human Right to a Green Future: Environmental Rights and Intergenerational Justice (Cambridge), won the 2010 award for the best book in human rights from the American Political Science Association. His most recent book is Suffer the Children: A Theoretical Foundation for the Human Rights of the Child (Oxford, 2021).

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).

The mission of the Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH) is to facilitate innovative and impactful connections across research, policy, and practice arenas to advance equity in school and child health. CSCH is committed to anti-racist work that prioritizes inclusion, reduces disparities, and creates systemic change.

CSCH serves as a central resource to University and external partners engaged in efforts that inform healthy, safe, supportive, and engaging environments for all children. The Collaboratory strives to create a positive environment that supports communication, knowledge sharing, and collaborative work among a diverse network of members in pursuit of this shared aim. Our collaborations intentionally use an inclusive, team- and relationship-based approach to broaden capacity for interconnected and cross-disciplinary projects that tackle the most pressing and complex issues in school and child health.

The Department of Human Development & Family Sciences (HDFS) focuses its research, teaching, and public engagement on a multidisciplinary understanding of 1) healthy development and wellbeing of individuals and families over the lifespan, 2) interactions and processes within families, and 3) individuals and families in societal and cultural contexts.

We are committed to excellence in research, teaching, and public engagement through our core values of individualized mentoring, innovation and leadership, diversity and equity, and applied/translational science.

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

Posted on March 1, 2022March 29, 2022 by Branzell, Alex

This series of dialogues is funded by Connecticut Humanities through the A More Perfect Union granting program of the National Endowment for the Humanities

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About the Research Program on Arts & Human Rights

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Call for Student Proposals

Youth Summit Sub-Themes

HRCH Youth Advisory Team

Past Youth Action Summits

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March 22 – The Declaration of Independence

April 5 – The Constitution

May 3 – The Bill of Rights

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About the Research Program on Economic & Social Rights at HRI

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March 22 – The Declaration of Independence

April 5 – The Constitution

May 3 – The Bill of Rights