FXB Holiday Gathering, December 6, 2023. | |
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Dear Colleagues,
Greetings as we end 2023!
Our newsletter arrives as we celebrate the 75th year since the UN General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948, thenceforth marked as Human Rights Day. There were no dissenting votes from member states. This degree of unity was propelled by the horrors of World War II and a sense that humanity required an explicit articulation of all peoples’ rights to dignity and safety. Professor Jaqueline Bhabha, the FXB Director of Research, reflects on this remarkable document.
This is the last FXB newsletter of 2023, a year when the US COVID pandemic officially ended, although the inequities that it so exposed continue. As COVID receded, military conflict has escalated. As I write, newspapers remained filled with accounts of the Israeli military actions in Gaza where the death toll continues to rise. The last number offered by Gaza’s Ministry of Health is 17,000 dead, largely non-combatants, specifically women and children. These numbers, a US official acknowledged, may well be an underestimate. Russia continues its attack on Ukraine with shocking civilian losses. Less in view are the other conflicts - Myanmar, Yemen, Syria, Sudan and more.
Peace is a prerequisite for health and in far too many places, there is war. Still, the soaring language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights inspires me and inspires our work. Take a moment to read it!
Wishing you a holiday break that brings peace and respite,
Mary T. Bassett, MD, MPH
Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
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The Universal Declaration at 75 – Looking Back and Forward | |
 |  | On December 10th, 2023, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the seminal and aspirational foundation for post World War II human rights principles, will turn 75. At the time of its signing, the Declaration encapsulated the contradictions of a world order in which the signatory states proclaimed “the inherent dignity and...the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” while many still maintained colonies whose peoples were denied those very equal rights, including the right to self-determination. But the Declaration also highlighted the widespread belief that “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind” could be avoided by adoption of common international standards of achievement both in the civil and political realm of liberty, equality and freedom, and in the social and economic realm of freedom from want, hunger, disease and ignorance. Both aspects of the Declaration are of utmost relevance today. The legacy of colonization continues to perpetuate injustice, and violent and barbarous acts continue to outrage and destroy. But the existence of common standards as a driver of progress has also had many positive spinoffs. Anniversaries offer opportunities to look back and forward. On December 10th this year, I will think back to the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the Universal Declaration and my activity during each as a teacher, human rights lawyer and activist, and I will look ahead to human rights challenges for the next quarter century as I see them.
I will remind myself that on the 50th anniversary, together with colleagues at the University of Chicago where I was then directing the University’s Human Rights Program, I founded Scholars at Risk, an effort to create academic solidarity among privileged and safe scholars for their peers facing persecution and risks to life. Like scientists, journalists and writers, we argued, so too academics should peer outside their ivory towers and do what they could to support colleagues facing terrible threats to their life and freedom because of their beliefs, identity or both. Fortunately our initiative has blossomed, and now hundreds of universities across the world, including Harvard, have vigorous Scholars at Risk programs that provide life changing support to endangered colleagues. A work in progress to be sure, with need far outstripping the supply of safe spaces, but a worthwhile contribution to protecting human rights nonetheless.
I will also remind myself that on the 60th anniversary, as Director of Harvard's University Committee on Human Rights Studies and together with many colleagues and students at Harvard, we organized an ambitious university-wide celebration of the Universal Declaration, with articles from the Declaration projected onto many different University buildings, and a huge event at the Kennedy School with 30 people on stage, one for each UDHR article, reading aloud the article that particularly concerned them. It was a demonstration of the relevance of human rights principles across the university, from the Engineering School to the theatre, from the Physics and the Middle Eastern Studies departments to the Graduate School of Design – the real possibility of “One Harvard” focused on a mission of non-discrimination and equity principles. Our celebrations involved scholars and students who had not previously considered human rights as central to their concerns, but who were persuaded to reconsider. Again persuading colleagues and students that human rights are central to our lives as citizens, consumers, workers, is a work in progress, but – at Harvard at least – I feel we have made important strides.
As I look forward this year, on December 10th, 2023, I will find it hard to muster the enthusiasm and optimism I seem to have had on previous anniversaries. I will be preoccupied by the devastating disregard of human rights and international law norms that we are witnessing, by the blatant violation of the mantra of “Never Again” as babies are killed and civilian populations bombarded. I will be preoccupied by the terrifying rise in state-supported xenophobia and racism that denies minorities equal access to citizenship, health care, child protection or rewarding employment, that increasingly forces people entitled to seek asylum and safe passage into life-threatening journeys. I will be preoccupied by evidence of our progressive destruction of the planet and ever-growing disparities in access to quality education and shelter, that mirror historical structures of exclusion and exploitation.
But I will also try to take comfort from the dynamism and brilliance of many of my students, whether their primary discipline is anthropology, divinity, law, public health or computer science, to hone their skills as social justice researchers or advocates. This December 10th will see many of my students more engaged than on the 50th or 60th anniversaries in political activism and rights-related research, whether their focus is climate change or structural racism, homophobia, the challenges posed by AI to children, the persistent inequities in access to health care or the enduring legacies of settler colonialism. As I grapple with the resurgence of a brutal arms race and the proliferation of authoritarian hate and fake speech, I will also celebrate students working to rescue migrants at sea, to develop maternal and child health programs in conflict areas, to draft policies that enhance the voice of indigenous and native peoples battling eviction from or appropriation of their ancestral lands, and to generate justice and healing for survivors of gender and sexual orientation-based violence. I will resolve to use the privilege of teaching in a diverse and inclusive university to inspire the next generation of human rights advocates, as I was inspired by the imperative to do better, and by teachers and mentors years ago. I will hope that the Universal Declaration’s powerful ambition for a just and free world will seem less distant in 25 years than it does now. How can we disagree that, as Article 1 of the Declaration proclaims: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MSc
François-Xavier Bagnoud Center Director of Research
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A Conversation with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah | |
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Health and Human Rights Journal Welcomes
New Editor-in-Chief
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 | | FXB Director Dr. Mary Bassett is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Joseph J. Amon as Editor-in-Chief of Health and Human Rights. Dr. Bassett described Joe as both a scholar and an activist who brings to the Journal his wide range of expertise in human rights and social justice and his understanding of how to document human rights abuses, build coalitions, and advocate for positive change. In his editorial in the December issue, Amon reflects on the contributions of previous editors, Jonathan Mann, Sofia Gruskin, and Paul Farmer, as Health and Human Rights approaches its 30th anniversary. He commented on the role the Journal has played in fostering discussion about health and human rights and advancing the field, and said he is “excited about working to ensure that the journal remains a robust home for scholars and advocates, public health professionals and human rights activists, to continue the journey of imagining and reimagining, as well as building a world where the right to health is realized for all.”
The December issue includes a special section on economic inequality and the right to health. Guest editors Gillian MacNaughton, Kayum Ahmed, Matt McConnell, and Sylvain Aubry collated nine papers that examine the role of neoliberal policies in exacerbating economic inequality and preventing efforts to progressively realize the right to health. The papers examine health care systems and social determinants of health in the context of neoliberalism and in light of the recent and current crises of gross economic inequality, austerity measures, climate change, and COVID-19.
The Journal is also inviting papers for its special section in December 2024 on Distress Migration and the Right to Health with Guest Editors: Stefano Angeleri and Jacqueline Bhabha. See details here.
Photo caption: Human rights must work toward dismantling the violence of the neoliberal architecture that reproduces poverty and inequality. Photo credit: Nikko Balanial.
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Weatherhead Migration Research Cluster
2024–2025 Doctoral Fellows Program
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Open to: Harvard doctoral students working on issues related to migrant inclusion and host community solidarity. Harvard doctoral candidates across all schools may apply. The program accepts six fellows per year.
What is the Migration Cluster?
The title of the three-year Migration Research Cluster, which is co-led by FXB Research Director Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MSc, is “Building Inclusion and Sustaining Solidarity.” The main focus of the cluster is the challenge of encouraging and sustaining over time the solidarity of local frontline communities toward distress migrants arriving within their midst. Research addressing aspects of this challenge—the factors that motivate local communities to show or withdraw solidarity, the central and local state policies that support or undermine that local solidarity, the collaborations that stimulate or discourage acts of inclusion across the spheres of public activity—spans a range of disciplinary approaches. We invite Harvard doctoral students working on this or related topics to apply.
What is the Migration Cluster Doctoral Fellowship?
The Fellowship, extending over eighteen months, involves willingness to participate in and contribute to a lively intellectual community. This includes bi-weekly participation in the Migration Cluster seminar and the opportunity to present and receive feedback on ongoing Fellows’ work. Fellows will also be expected to develop a ‘deliverable’ that will be part of the public goods the Cluster aims to build (e.g., a policy or practice brief, an academic article). Fellows will have the opportunity to support the planning of and also to attend larger convenings of the Cluster. Fellows will receive a $7,500 stipend (to be awarded the first year of the eighteen-month Fellowship).
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Application deadline: January 5, 2024
Fellowship duration: Fellowships are eighteen months long. They will begin on February 1, 2024 and end on July 30, 2025.
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2024 Intensive Summer Course on
Migration and Refugee Studies in Greece
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Open to:
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Sixteen Harvard participants: The following are eligible to apply: graduate students from any Harvard graduate school, doctoral candidates, college seniors. Harvard alumni (anyone who has graduated from Harvard University in the past).
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Sixteen Non-Harvard participants: The following are eligible to apply: doctoral, graduate or senior undergraduate students enrolled in any university across the world.
About the Summer Course:
The François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, in collaboration with the Refugee and Migration Studies Hub at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and with the support of the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece and the U.S., is offering a three-week intensive, interdisciplinary course on migration and refugee studies. The course is designed to offer participants both conceptual and practical engagement with key issues related to contemporary forced migration.
The course will include lectures, seminars, interactive class sessions and fieldwork. It will be held in four sites – Athens, Ancient Olympia, Nafplio and Lesvos. Enrollment will be limited to 32 students (16 Harvard graduate students and 16 students from other Universities across the world). Expert lecturers will include leading scholars, politicians, leaders of international organizations, civil society organizations and migrant/refugee groups. The course will be taught in English and organized around a multidisciplinary, rights-based curriculum that draws on legal, medical, environmental and broader social science approaches to migration policy and practice.
Revisit the course through the eyes of past participants:
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Apply by: February 10, 2024
Course Dates: July 5 – July 28, 2024
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Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights | |
2024-2025 Health and Human Rights Fellowship Call for Applications | |
The 2024 Fellowship will support a scholar with significant work in international humanitarian law and/or human rights law with an intersection in health and human rights as it pertains to the health of Palestinians to produce innovative scholarship in their respective field. Find more details and the application below.
For further inquiries, please reach out to nbahour@hsph.harvard.edu.
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Palestine Health Research Fund
The Palestine Health Research Fund supports Birzeit and Harvard students and faculty to undertake research aimed at elucidating the structural and social determinants of health through grant and stipend support. Applications for stipend support are accepted on a rolling basis.
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Save the Date for the 12th Roma Conference at Harvard on April 5th, 2024 | |
The annual Roma conference at Harvard has been established as a forum for presenting research and discussion concerning anti-Roma racism, its genesis, history, pillars, and manifestations. It seeks to advance the collection of Roma-related data and the improvement of research methods and practice-oriented research to inform the development of histories, policies, and practices centered on the Roma people. The Harvard Roma conference also seeks to place and co-center the Roma people in global conversations on anti-racism, justice-based policies and laws, and solidarity.
The 2024 conference will foster cross-border and inter-disciplinary dialogues and examination of state violence. It will identify pathways for enacting reforms in law, policy, and practice that center on justice, intersectional, and anti-racism principles. Analysis of health disparities and injustices will consider relevant precipitating socioeconomic determinants but also the consequences of the structural racism that states uphold and enforce to secure a variety of outcomes. Join us in person on Friday, April 5th, 2024 from 1:00pm - 6:30pm ET at Harvard's Barker Center. Registration will open in early 2024.
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Short Paper: Reflections on the current war in Palestine | |
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There are reasons the international community still holds fast to the tenets of international humanitarian law. The world itself, as populated by governments and citizens, might not have persisted to this day without these legal injunctions requiring forbearance during armed conflict. Distilled from over 150 years of considered experience of war and suffering and loss, these carefully crafted documents of legal consensus guide and constrain the strategy and conduct of the world’s governments and armed forces.
The passage of time has allowed the international courts and the UN to establish the category of Customary International Law, integrating all of the documents described briefly below into one body of law that now applies to all states in the world, regardless of whether they have signed or ratified the main historic treaties.
These legal constraints are most in play when states and their militaries determine how, when, and with what means they will undertake and prosecute a war against a state or non-state actor. To support this observation, we need look no further than to the recent attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas and the response of the Israeli government and its military conduct of the war in Gaza and the West Bank. When the laws of armed conflict are flouted, sheer brutality may well rule the land.
I write this reflection in full acknowledgment that the United States (whose citizenship I hold) has committed exceedingly grave violations of the principles and laws I discuss below. The ghastly carnage of World War II (1939-1945) prompted the drafting and debate process that produced the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the 1949 Geneva Conventions. We all live in the moral shadow of the Holocaust and Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Read the full paper here.
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH
FXB Senior Research Fellow; Professor of Health and Human Rights, retired, Harvard School of Public Health; former Director of the Harvard FXB Center; and former Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
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Youth as Climate and Health Advocates | |
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The Fall 2023 FXB Climate Advocates cohort unites 125 global youth advocates to put into practice climate solutions through 10 sessions and guides them to discover their climate narratives. Advocates connect with dedicated FXB Climate Advocates alumni, learn from experts, and design climate action projects focusing on carbon sequestration, nature-based solutions, and policy advocacy, among others.
The FXB Climate Advocates program is currently represented at the Conference of Parties (COP) 28 in Dubai by Karina Weinstein, FXB USA’s Program Strategy and Innovation Director, and 25 FXB Climate Advocates alumni. Karina presented the FXB Climate Advocates model on "Experiential Climate Education: The Role of Student and Youth-led Organizations" panel on December 8, 2023 as part of the Youth, Children, Education, and Skills thematic day. In addition to their role as members of the FXB Climate Advocates network, FXB Climate Advocates alumni will represent diverse organizations such as YOUNGO (the official children and youth), Youth in Action for Climate Change (YACC Uganda), and Re-Earth Initiative, among others. At COP28, our advocates will present on numerous topics, among them climate finance, climate education, indigenous rights, and sustainable agriculture.
The Spring 2024 FXB Climate Advocates program will occur from January 27 - May 17, 2024. The application deadline is January 8, 2024, at 5:00 pm EST.
Learn more and apply here: https://www.fxbclimateadvocates.org/apply
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Book corner: FXB recommendations | |
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States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, Stanley Cohen, Polity Press, 2001
Recommended by Mary T. Bassett
"This book explores how people live with inequality and suffering without acknowledging it, and often not seeing it."
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Go, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck, New Directions, 2017
Recommended by Jacqueline Bhabha
"A marvelous account of the encounter between locals and refugees which highlights both humanity, complexity and contradiction in fraught situations. In my view the book is one of the best on the topic, set in contemporary Germany and focused on the experience of African and middle eastern refugees."
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Equitable representation of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the physician workforce will take over 100 years without systemic change
The Lancet Regional Health - Americas,
October 8, 2023, Victor A. Lopez-Carmen, MPH, Rohan Khazanchi, MD, MPH (Co-Authors)
While there has been significant recovery of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) population and revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems, AI/AN physicians remain underrepresented in the United States (U.S.) physician workforce. Despite greater enrollment of underrepresented medical students between 1997 and 2017, the per capita enrollment of Black and African American, Latino, and AI/AN medical students decreased relative to the general population, and AI/AN medical students were the only racial group that did not experience an absolute increase in medical school enrollment. According to 2022–2023 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), only 1% of total enrolled medical students self-identified as AI/AN, compared to 2.9% of the 2021 U.S. population.
The underrepresentation of AI/AN individuals is even worse among practicing physicians. According to the 2021 AAMC State Physician Workforce Report, only 4104 (0.4%) active physicians in the U.S. self-identified as AI/AN. If AI/AN representation in the physician workforce matched their proportion in the U.S. population, there would be nearly 30,000 AI/AN physicians today. In the absence of transformative efforts to address this health equity crisis, population parity will never be a reality. Read the full article here.
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Recent FXB Center Writing in Peer-Reviewed Publications
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
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In the wake of the hottest summer ever recorded, climate change action heats up in Massachusetts
Gaurab Basu interviewed, GBH News Under the Radar, October 13, 2023
Climate change turned up the heat this summer — the sweltering temperatures in August and September were the hottest since global records began in 1880.
Meanwhile, two significant efforts to fight climate change are taking root. In a first of its kind agreement, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut are working together to build more offshore wind farms. Plus, an $11 million grant will help Boston expand its tree canopy especially in areas where trees are scarce.
GUESTS
Dr. Gaurab Basu, director of education and policy at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, FXB Faculty Affiliate
Beth Daley, executive editor and general manager of The Conversation, U.S.
Sam Payne, digital development manager and communications specialist for Better Future Project, a Massachusetts-based grassroots climate action organization
Listen to the full GBH Under the Radar interview here
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December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
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Flash Webinar: Attacks on Healthcare in Gaza
On Thursday, November 2, 2023 the FXB Center's Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights hosted a virtual conversation with health and human rights experts to discuss the attacks on healthcare in Gaza, the West Bank, and the United States. This event was co-sponsored by the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School. Watch here
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Covering race and racism: A view from the newsroom
Presented jointly by the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and the Center for Health Communication. It isn’t enough to write about race and health separately: to tell the whole story, journalists must explore the many complex ways in which race, racism, and health intersect. In this fireside chat, renowned journalists Akilah Johnson of The Washington Post and Amber Payne of The Emancipator were joined by health equity expert and former NYC health commissioner and current FXB Director Mary Bassett. Watch here
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FXB Center Work in Progress Seminar: Forced Mobility and Organized Crime in Latin America
On October 3, 2023 FXB Visiting Scholar, Sergio Aguayo, PhD, MA a scholar, human rights advocate, and political analyst from Mexico presented his recent work. Through his dedication and experience, Dr. Aguayo has spent his career shedding light on social justice issues, human rights violations, and democratic governance in Mexico. Dr. Aguayo is a professor and researcher for El Colegio de México, a visiting professor at Harvard University, and a member of the Mexican Researchers National System (Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, SNI). Watch here
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Affirmative Action after SFFA: Is the US in Violation of International Human Rights Law?
A panel composed of leading experts on the law of racial discrimination, discussed the domestic and international legal implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) decision as well as its practical implications for the lived reality of those who face discrimination. Watch here
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Reassembling the Pieces: Experiences from the Palestine Social Medicine Course
During this webinar, students who participated in the inaugural Palestine Social Medicine Course in July 2023 spoke about their experience and takeaways. Overall, thirty students from the United States, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip participated. The course included 5 field visits, lectures, and guest speakers from over 20 local and international organizations and institutions. Watch here
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