Today is the last day of classes here at UConn, and I wanted to take a moment to offer some highlights from Fall 2009:

In October, the Human Rights Institute and UConn Law School co-hosted the Human Rights in the USA Conference.  A volume with papers from the conference will be published, so if you weren’t able to attend, you can still read about pressing human rights issues in the US, such as health care, domestic violence, discrimination, and immigration policies, just to name a few!

In November, I attended and presented at “Remembering War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations: Oral History, New Media and the Arts,”  an interdisciplinary conference co-organized by the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling (COHDS) and the Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations project.

And, last night I attended a panel discussion on science and human rights, before seeing the Connecticut Repertory Theatre’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, which will be playing through Saturday, December 12, at Jorgenson Theatre at the UConn campus. 

Good luck with finals, and enjoy the winter break!  I’ll be back in January with updates about what’s new for the spring semester.

World-renowned artist and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar will be giving a presentation about his art and career at the Dodd Research Center in Konover Auditorium at 1:00pm on Wednesday, October 21st.   Jaar, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award will be creating a new human rights installation in March 2010 at the Contemporary Art Galleries at the University of Connecticut.  

Jaar’s films and art installations explore world events such as genocides, epidemics, and famines. His work bears witness to military conflicts, political corruption, and imbalances of power between industrialized and developing nations. Subjects addressed include the holocaust in Rwanda, gold mining in Brazil, toxic pollution in Nigeria, and issues related to the border between Mexico and the United States.  Jaar’s Many awards, including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award; a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award; and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts ; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Jaar’s talk is being cosponsored by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Art and Art History and Human Right Institute.  Catalogs of Jaar’s work are available at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Newspaper clipping about the death of South African photographer, Abdul Shariff in 1994. (Impact Visuals Photograph Collection, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center)

Abdul Shariff, a South African photojournalist, was shot in the back and killed while photographing an African National Congress delegation visit to Katlehong, South Africa, on January 9, 1994. Shariff was 31.

A member of the Impact Visuals co-operative, Shariff was hit by fire from a hostel occupied by Inkatha supporters and apparently directed at Cyril Ramaphosa and Joe Slovo, according to an obituary from the Southern African Report (SAR). 

Shariff, a free-lance photographer on assignment for the AP, was in a crowd of journalists surrounding the dignitaries on the muddy dirt road when young men carrying AK-47 automatic rifles began shooting from the narrow paths between houses. Shariff attempted to run across a small clearing – maybe for a better view. Witnesses said he was killed by a single shot in the back. The bullet apparently went through his body and dented the Nikon F4 camera hanging around his neck. Shariff was born in Verulam in the South African state of Natal. He became a news photographer after studying at the University of Natal-Pietermaritzburg.

Shariff was known for documenting the violence and oppression of apartheid, often focusing on the perspective of township residents and black workers. He had worked for Impact Visuals for three years, originally as part of the photo collective Afrapix. From his early documentary projects for activist student publications, the Natal Indian Congress and the UDF, Shariff’s photography in the last few years has appeared regularly in South Africa, Europe, Canada and the US, in major news publications that include The Weekly Mail, Der Spiegel, Newsweek and the New York Times, as well as our own. “I see my pictures contributing to the documentation of our history,” he wrote shortly before his death. Shariff had fought against apartheid all his life, starting with the student political movement while in high school, where he was a coordinator of the nationwide school boycotts.

Photographs and correspondence to and from Shariff documenting his work for Afrapix are open to researchers as part of the Impact Visuals Photograph Collection at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Join us on October 5 at 11 AM, as we award the fourth Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Dangerous Assignments, the newsletter for the Committee to Protect Journalists. From the Laurie S. Wiseberg and Harry Scoble Human Rights Internet Collection at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

On October 5, 2009, the fourth Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights will be presented to The Committee to Protect Journalists.  The ceremony will take place on the plaza of the Dodd Research Center at 11 AM.   

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) works to promote press freedom worldwide.  CPJ takes action when journalists are censored, jailed, kidnapped, or killed for their efforts to tell the truth.  In their defense of journalists, CPJ protects the right of all people to have access to diverse and independent sources of information. CPJ has been a leading voice in the global press freedom movement since its founding in 1981. 

CPJ’s staff of experienced journalists and human rights researchers investigates press freedom abuses in more than 120 countries, from authoritarian regimes like Cuba and Burma to fragmented states like Iraq and Somalia. They respond to attacks against the press through five regional programs: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2008, CPJ carried out research and advocacy missions in Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Burma, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Mozambique, and South Africa.  CPJ runs an International Program Network with five consultants based around the world: in Mexico City, São Paolo, Cairo, Johannesburg, and Bangkok.  IPN staffers conduct on-the-spot investigations into serious abuses, organize emergency missions, and provide direct support to journalists who have suffered violence and incarceration.