[2529] in peace2
Questions for Human Rights Speaker this Wed?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (piali@MIT.EDU)
Tue May 6 04:03:03 2003
From: piali@MIT.EDU
Message-ID: <1052148211.3eb681f39a117@webmail.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:23:31 -0400
To: hemisphere-announce@mit.edu, utr-announce@mit.edu, mitai-announce@mit.edu,
peace-announce@mit.edu, ps-all@mit.edu, cis-all@mit.edu,
mun-request@mit.edu
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
As some of you may already know, the MIT Western Hemisphere Project has
organized a lecture this Wednesday by John Shattuck, former US Ambassador and
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor under the
Clinton Administration. Shattuck has a wealth of experience dealing with human
rights and civil liberty issues, both from within and outside the State
Department. We hope that he will provide us with as much insight as possible
into the complexities of human rights issues and how they are and should be
dealt with within the government.
We want to make sure that, as an audience, we are able to adequately question
and challenge Mr. Shattuck, and that questions and concerns of MIT community
members are voiced. I am emailing to you, on behalf of MITWHP, because I am
trying to compile a list of questions that you all might have for Mr.
Shattuck. I will be asking them during Q and A at the lecture, and will state
that the questions are coming from MIT students. If any of you attended the
February MITWHP lecture by Jennifer Harburry and have questions relating to the
government's course of action in dealing with the Guatemala crisis, that would
be great. However, any questions having to do with the state's handling of
human rights-type issues, specific to the Clinton administration, the current
administration, or just generally would also be great. We have a unique
opportunity to hear from some one who is so intimately tied to these sorts of
issues and has had decades of experience dealing with them so please do send
whatever questions you have for him. Thanks a lot (you can send them to my
email address)! Included below is a short excerpt from Shattuck's book that
has not yet been released.
Sincerely,
Piali Mukhopadhyay
*lecture is THIS Wednesday May 7 @7:00 in 10-250*
Freedom on Fire: Human Rights Wars and America's Response
John Shattuck
As the chief human rights official inside the Clinton Administration, John
Shattuck faced a nightmare. Disasters were exploding simultaneously - genocide
in Rwanda and Bosnia, murder and atrocities in Haiti, repression in China,
brutal ethnic wars and failed states in other parts of the world. But America
was mired in conflicting priorities and was reluctant to act. What were
Shattuck and his allies to do?
This is the story of their struggle inside the U.S. government over how to
respond. Shattuck tells what was tried and what was learned as he and other
human rights hawks worked to change the Clinton Administration's human rights
policy from disengagement to saving lives and bringing war criminals to
justice. He records his frustrations and disappointments, as well as the
successes achieved in moving human rights to the center of U.S. foreign
policy.
Shattuck was at the heart of the action. He was the first official to
interview the survivors of Srebrenica. He confronted Milosevic in Belgrade.
He was a key player in bringing the leaders of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda to
justice. He pushed from the inside for an American response to the crisis of
the Haitian boat people. He pressed for the release of political prisoners in
China. His book is both an insider's account and a detailed prescription for
preventing such wars in the future.
Shattuck argues that human rights wars are the breeding grounds for terrorism.
He criticizes the Bush Administration's war on terrorism, which he says
undermines human rights at home and around the world. Freedom on Fire
describes the shifting challenges of global leadership in a world of explosive
hatreds and deepening inequalities.
John Shattuck served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor from 1993 to 1998, and U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic
from 1998 to 2000. Currently, he is Chief Executive Officer of the John F.
Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston.
