Committee on Academic Freedom: Current Concerns and Initiatives

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-355
Author(s):  
Laurie A. Brand
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
North America ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
Academic Lectures ◽  
Current Concerns

According to its Mission Statement, MESA's Committee on Academic Freedom (CAF) is tasked with monitoring violations of academic freedom in the MENA region as well as in North America. Violations of academic freedom are often understood as comprising governmental attempts to prevent scholars from conducting scholarly research, publishing their findings, delivering academic lectures, and traveling to international scholarly meetings. However, CAF often addresses cases in which professors and academic researchers irrespective of discipline are harassed, persecuted, dismissed or detained for their peaceful professional or personal activities, particularly if they encourage respect for human rights. In some instances, the committee has also protested state violence that has deliberately targeted educational institutions’ buildings or campuses.

Risk, Desire and Adaptation: The Paradox of Queer Solidarity and the Political Possibility of Death Under Neoliberalism and Homonationalism

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Natalie Kouri-Towe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Strategy I

In 2015, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid Toronto (QuAIA Toronto) announced that it was retiring. This article examines the challenges of queer solidarity through a reflection on the dynamics between desire, attachment and adaptation in political activism. Tracing the origins and sites of contestation over QuAIA Toronto's participation in the Toronto Pride parade, I ask: what does it mean for a group to fashion its own end? Throughout, I interrogate how gestures of solidarity risk reinforcing the very systems that activists desire to resist. I begin by situating contemporary queer activism in the ideological and temporal frameworks of neoliberalism and homonationalism. Next, I turn to the attempts to ban QuAIA Toronto and the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ from the Pride parade to examine the relationship between nationalism and sexual citizenship. Lastly, I examine how the terms of sexual rights discourse require visible sexual subjects to make individual rights claims, and weighing this risk against political strategy, I highlight how queer solidarities are caught in a paradox symptomatic of our times: neoliberalism has commodified human rights discourses and instrumentalised sexualities to serve the interests of hegemonic power and obfuscate state violence. Thinking through the strategies that worked and failed in QuAIA Toronto's seven years of organising, I frame the paper though a proposal to consider political death as a productive possibility for social movement survival in the 21stcentury.

Plausible Legality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Drone Strikes ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Global War ◽  
Enhanced Interrogation

After 9/11, American officials authorized numerous contentious counterterrorism practices including torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, trial by military commission, targeted killing, and mass surveillance. While these policies sparked global outrage, the Bush administration defended them as legally legitimate. Government lawyers produced memoranda deeming enhanced interrogation techniques, denial of habeas corpus, drone strikes, and warrantless wiretapping lawful. Although it rejected torture, the Obama administration made similar claims and declined to prosecute abuses. This book seeks to understand how and why Americans repeatedly legally justified seemingly illegal security policies and what this tells us about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. It argues that legal cultures shape how political actors interpret, enact, and evade legal norms. In the global war on terror, a culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover—to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations—in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing. In this context, law served as a permissive constraint, enabling abuses while imposing some limits on what could be plausibly legalized. Cultures of legal rationalization stand in contrast with other cultures prevalent in American history, including cultures of exception, which rely on logics of necessity and racial exclusion, and cultures of secrecy, which employ plausible deniability. Looking forward, legal norms remain vulnerable to manipulation and evasion. Despite the efforts of human rights advocates to encourage deeper compliance, the normalization of post-9/11 policy has created space for the Trump administration to promote a renewed culture of exception and launch bolder attacks on the rule of law.

Human rights abuses at the limits of the law: Legal instabilities and vulnerabilities in the ‘Global War on Terror’

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Legal Compliance ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Indefinite Detention ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Global War

AbstractLaw following and law breaking are often conceptualised as polar opposites. However, authorities in liberal democracies increasingly deploy a strategy of what I callplausible legalityin order to secure immunity and legitimacy for proscribed practices. Rather than ignore or suspend law, they construct legal justifications for human rights abuses and other dubious policies, obscuring the distinction between legal compliance and non-compliance. I argue this is possible because instabilities in legal rules make them vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation. By tracing American rationales for contentious ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, indefinite detention, and ‘targeted killing’ practices in the ‘Global War on Terror’, I show that law need not always be abandoned or radically reconstituted to achieve troubling ends and that rule structures enable certain patterns of violation while limiting others. The international prohibition on torture is robust and universal, but provides vague definitions open to interpretation. Detention and lethal targeting regulations are jurisdictionally layered and contextually complex, creating loopholes and gaps. The article concludes by reflecting on implications for the protection of human rights. While law is not wholly indeterminate, human rights advocates must constantly advocate shared legal understandings that constrain state violence.

scholarly journals Obesity as a Covered Disability Under Employment Discrimination Law: An Analysis of Canadian Approaches

2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 620-649
Author(s):  
Harris L. Zwerling
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
North America ◽  
Employment Discrimination ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Central Thesis ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Antidiscrimination Laws

Since the passage of the first anti-discrimination laws in North America, the number of groups or classes protected has slowly expanded. People with disabilities are one of the more recent groups to be covered by such laws. No Canadian human rights statute includes the obese or overweight as a separate designated group. British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in which obesity per se has been found to be a covered disability. All other Canadian jurisdictions that have explicitly addressed the issue require claimants to prove that their obesity is a disabling condition and has an underlying involuntary medical cause. This paper examines the treatment of the obese under the antidiscrimination laws of the Canadian federal and provincial jurisdictions, focusing primarily upon the laws of Ontario. Its central thesis is that despite the reticence of various human rights agencies, there is ample legal basis for including obesity as a covered disability under human rights law.

scholarly journals Responsabilidad universitaria de la educación médica en las unidades de salud

UVserva ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Domingo Vázquez Martínez
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Health System ◽  
National Health ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
National Health System ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Derechos Humanos ◽  
National Human ◽  
De Medicina

La Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) tiene 20 años realizando recomendaciones a las autoridades del Sistema Nacional de Salud por violaciones a los derechos humanos de los usuarios de las unidades de salud, derivadas de la falta de supervisión a estudiantes de medicina que, como parte de su educación profesional, atienden pacientes. La Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos establece que las universidades e instituciones de educación superior autónomas tienen la responsabilidad de la formación profesional en el país. En este sentido, las universidades son garantes de la formación, evaluación y supervisión de los estudiantes de medicina en las unidades de salud. Dirigir las recomendaciones de la CNDH a las instituciones educativas contribuiría significativamente a que los programas de educación médica mejoren significativamente y a que no se violen derechos humanos de los usuarios de las unidades de salud por falta de compromiso educativo.Palabras clave: Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos; Sistema Nacinal de Salud; estudiantes medicina; trato a pacientes; instituciones educativas; derechos humanos AbstractFor 20 years the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico (CNDH as it is a Spanish acronym) has been making recom­mendations addressed to the authorities of the National Health System on human rights violation against users of health units, which result from the lack of supervision of medical students that, as part of their professional tra­ining, treat patients. The Political Constitution of the Mexican United States points out that autonomous universities and higher education institutions are responsible for professional training in the country. In this sense, univer­sities are guarantors of training, assessment and supervision of medical students at heal­th units. Addressing the recommendations by CNDH to educational institutions will signifi­cantly contribute to improve the medical edu­cation programs and stop human rights viola­tions against users of health units because of lack of educational commitment.Keywords: National Human Rights Commission; National Health System; medical students; treat patients; educational institutions; human rights

scholarly journals Academic Freedom and Its Protection in the Law of European States

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-345
Author(s):  
Klaus D. Beiter ◽  
Terence Karran ◽  
Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The European Union ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

Focusing on those countries that are members of the European Union, it may be noted that these countries are bound under international human rights agreements, such as the International Covenants on Civil and Political, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights, to safeguard academic freedom under provisions providing for the right to freedom of expression, the right to education, and respect for ‘the freedom indispensable for scientific research.’ unesco’s Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, a ‘soft-law’ document of 1997, concretises international human rights requirements to be complied with to make the protection of the right to academic freedom effective. Relying on a set of human rights indicators, the present article assesses the extent to which the constitutions, laws on higher education, and other relevant legislation of eu states implement the Recommendation’s criteria. The situation of academic freedom in practice will not be assessed here. The results for the various countries have been quantified and countries ranked in accordance with ‘their performance.’ The assessment demonstrates that, overall, the state of the protection of the right to academic freedom in the law of European states is one of ‘ill-health.’ Institutional autonomy is being misconstrued as exhausting the concept of academic freedom, self-governance in higher education institutions sacrificed for ‘executive-style’ management, and employment security abrogated to cater for ‘changing employment needs’ in higher education.

Institutions of the “Yes”

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-73
Author(s):  
Dawne McCance
Keyword(s):  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Future ◽  
Ecce Homo

Derrida returns to the questions of academic freedom, teaching as auto-reproduction, and the biological-biographical body by considering Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo before turning to his earlier (1872) On the Future of our Educational Institutions. Central to this chapter is Derrida’s inheritance of Nietzsche’s autograph-signature.

Nomadic Peoples and Alternate Conceptions of Place

Fully Human ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 129-149
Author(s):  
Lindsey N. Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Property Rights ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Mena Region ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Community Membership ◽  
Freedom Of Movement

Under pressure from sedentary majority populations, nomadic peoples face serious threats to their cultural survival and livelihood. Nomadic groups have long faced suspicion and discrimination—as illustrated by the ongoing marginalization of European Roma and Travellers, the Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya, and the Bedouin of the MENA region—and modern societies tend to see human rights, including the basic rights of freedom of movement and property rights, through a lens that privileges settlement. Indeed, nomadic peoples are often viewed with suspicion and excluded from the citizenry because they move “too much” and do not conform to majority views related to settlement, land use, and community membership. This bias leaves nomadic peoples without functioning citizenship in regard to state governments, who fail to understand their basic needs and perspectives. Resulting rights abuses center not only on rights to land and natural resources but also on cultural and political expression.

Thinking Allowed in the Academy

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-146
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
International Standards ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Model Code ◽  
Institutional Power

The recent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers (‘the Review’), overseen by the Hon Robert French AC, identified areas for improving freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to that end proposed the adoption of umbrella principles embedded in a Model Code. The Review’s engagement with international human rights law standards was confined, even though many are binding on Australia. As universities consider implementing the Review’s recommendations, this article reflects on the Model Code in the light particularly of  the standards established by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’). If the drafters of the Model Code had paid closer regard to the ICCPR and other international standards, the result may have been a scheme that more clearly and predictably distinguishes permissible from impermissible restriction on free speech and academic freedom, and gives greater priority to promoting the human rights of those in the academic community than to the institutional power to limit them.

Monitoring Human Rights in Africa

1991 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-510
Author(s):  
Richard Dicker
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
New Evidence

Since its founding in May 1988, Africa Watch has documented and reported on human rights abuses in 13 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These findings are available in eight book-length reports and more than 70 newsletters, with new evidence available all the time on such topics as, for example, the suppression of information in the Sudan, violations of laws of war in Liberia, the devastating impact of the 15-year armed conflict in Angola, slavery in Mauritania, and interference with academic freedom in Zimbabwe.

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