Idealists United has created a conference that will teach students how to move beyond charity and take a step toward advocacy. The aim of this conference is to train students in strategies that will allow them to overcome typical barriers to progress and become more effective activists, regardless of cause. Our hope is to give you, the student, the confidence and knowledge needed to create change within the societal issues you feel most passionate about.

            The conference will take place in the Dodd Center Saturday, February 23rd from 10am-6pm. For more information or to register stop by the Human Rights Institute or e-mail Idealists.united@gmail.com.

The conference will contain a keynote speaker, 3 sets of workshops, a peer-networking lunch, and a closing activity.The workshops are as follows:

The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut has an all new, redesigned website.   If you haven’t seen it already, please check it out!

These past couple of weeks have been extremely busy, so please excuse the lack of updates.

 Here are a few new human rights titles in Babbidge Library:

Hicks, Elizabeth.  Human Rights and Healthcare. 2007.

Koenig, Matthias.  Democracy and Human Rights in Multicultural Societies.  2007.   

Mapp, Susan C.  Human Rights and Social Justice in Global Perspective:  An Introduction to International Social Work.  2007.

Zaccai, Edwin.  Sustainable Consumption, Ecology and Fair Trade.  2007

Forsythe, David P.  American Foreign Policy in a Gloablized World.  2006.

Forsythe, David P.  International Committee of the Red Cross:  A Neutral Humanitarian Actor.  2007.

From the UConn Advance, October 15, 2007

Oral History Project on Anti-apartheid Struggle Completed, by Michael Kirk

A substantial, wide-ranging oral history of the African National Congress (ANC) and the lives of its leading figures during South Africa’s apartheid years has been donated to the University by the ANC.

The ANC was established in 1912 to provide a political avenue for the struggle for racial equality in South Africa. After apartheid became official policy in 1948, it became the leading anti-apartheid organization.

Interviews with 133 ANC leaders conducted in South Africa between 2000 and 2006 have been transcribed and donated to UConn as part of the University’s partnership with the ANC and the University of Fort Hare in South Africa. Fort Hare also holds a copy  of the transcripts.

The transcripts, ranging in length from seven to 135 pages, will be permanently housed at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and will be available to scholars, students, and the public.

“The ANC oral histories add a significant dimension to the Dodd Center’s growing collection of human rights materials,” says Thomas Wilsted, director of the Dodd Center.

“The oral histories offer valuable insight into the impact of apartheid on the lives of South Africans and will be a significant resource to faculty and students researching and teaching history and human rights. We also hope to make copies of the oral history transcripts available online for wider access to their content.”

The collection features South Africans being interviewed by other South Africans, a number of whom were trained in the collection of oral histories by Bruce Stave, director of the oral history office at UConn, and his staff.

“Training the South African interviewers proved to be an exciting and stimulating oral history experience for me and my associates,” says Stave, professor emeritus of history.

After an intensive two-week workshop in Cape Town, teams of interviewers fanned out throughout the country to conduct the initial interviews of the project.

They returned to evaluate this work before conducting more taped conversations. Two of the interviewers came to Storrs to earn their M.A. degrees in history.

The topics of the interviews range from the educational system in South Africa, to prison conditions and life under house arrest, life in exile, and the 1994 democratic elections.

“The uniqueness of the ANC transcripts here at UConn is their ability to shed light on the experiences and daily lives of those who actively dismantled the apartheid system,” says Valerie Love, curator for human rights collections at the Dodd Center.

“The oral histories not only give voice to the experiences of black South Africans whose history and experiences went for the most part unrecorded under the apartheid system, they also include interviews with members of the ANC who had been classified as Indians, “coloreds,” and whites so as to illuminate the spectrum of experiences that South African activists endured as a result of their race.”

Amii Omara-Otunnu, executive director of the UConn-ANC Partnership who holds the UNESCO Chair in Comparative Human Rights, says, “The ANC represents something terribly special in the history of human rights. It was the first national party in world history to have a vision of a non-racist society where all people are respected equally.”

The oral histories are particularly important because many ANC leaders limited their written communications for security reasons during the anti-apartheid struggle.

Between 1960 and 1990, many members of the ANC, forced into exile because of their activism, continued their political work against apartheid from outside the country.

After apartheid was ended, the ANC won the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.

In an effort to preserve its history, the party established archives at the University of Fort Hare, a historically black institution, with the goal of collecting historical materials from 33 different countries.

In March 1999, UConn signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the ANC establishing a partnership to foster training, assistance, and cooperation in developing oral histories and archival records of the ANC, and to develop comparative studies in human rights.

As part of the project, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center staff provided archival planning and training for ANC staff. During the period 2000 to 2006, ANC archivists organized more than 3,000 cubic feet of archival collections created during the apartheid years, with support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

Those records are now housed at the University of Fort Hare.

##

The ANC Oral History Transcript Collection is open to researchers.  The collection is located at the  Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at UConn, which is open from from 10 AM to 7 PM on Mondays, 10 AM to 4 PM, Tuesday through Friday,  and on Saturdays from 12 to 4 PM during the academic year.

For more information: 

The finding aid for the ANC Oral History Transcripts Collection

Connecticut Public Radio’s Where We Live program which discussed the interviews

The Hartford Courant’s article on the ANC Oral History Transcripts Collection

The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center

The Oral History Office at UConn

Here are the latest additions to the human rights holdings at Babbidge Library.   

Justice and Law 

SOCIAL JUSTICE: THEORIES, ISSUES, AND MOVEMENTS.  By Loretta Capeheart, 2007

GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT: CROSS-NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES.  Ed. Donatella Della Porta, 2007

HOW TO MAKE OPPORTUNITY EQUAL: RACE AND CONTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE, by Paul Gomberg, 2007

VIOLENCE, CONFLICT, AND WORLD ORDER: CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS ON STATE-SANCTIONED JUSTICE, by Gregg Barak, 2007

CONSTRUCTING JUSTICE AND SECURITY AFTER WAR, by Charles T. Call, 2007

EXPLORING INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS: ESSENTIAL READINGS, by Rhonda L. Callaway, 2007

JUDGES, TRANSITION, AND HUMAN RIGHTS, by John Morison, 2007

EXTRAORDINARY JUSTICE: MILITARY TRIBUNALS IN HISTORICAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT, by Peter Judson Richards, 2007

ATROCITY, PUNISHMENT, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW, by Mark A. Drumbl, 2007

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: THE STRUGGLE FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE, by Geoffrey Robertson, 2006

CONFLICT AND COMPLIANCE: STATE RESPONSES TO INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS PRESSURE, by Sonia Cardenas, 2007

WHEN THE STATE NO LONGER KILLS: INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NORMS AND ABOLITION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, by San Gmin Bae, 2007

SLAVERY, FREEDOM, AND THE LAW IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD: A BRIEF HISTORY WITH DOCUMENTS, by Sue Peabody, 2007

  Poverty and Economic Rights 

ECONOMIC RIGHTS: CONCEPTUAL, MEASUREMENT, AND POLICY ISSUES, by Shareen Hertel and Lanse Minker, 2007

FREEDOM FROM POVERTY AS A HUMAN RIGHT: WHO OWES WHAT TO THE VERY POOR?, ed. Thomas Pogge, 2007

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS IN ACTION, ed, Mashood A. Baderin, 2007

MEMBERSHIP-BASED ORGANIZATIONS OF THE POOR, ed. Martha Chen, 2007

BATTLE FOR WELFARE RIGHTS: POLITICS AND POVERTY IN MODERN AMERICA, by Felicia Kornbluh, 2007

UNDER COVER OF SCIENCE: AMERICAN LEGAL-ECONOMIC THEORY AND THE QUEST FOR OBJECTIVITY, by James R. Hackney, 2007

  Human Rights General 

BLOOD AND SOIL: A WORLD HISTORY OF GENOCIDE AND EXTERMINATION FROM SPARTA TO DARFUR, by Ben Kiernan, 2007

WHITE MAN’S BURDEN: WHY THE WEST’S EFFORTS TO AID THE REST HAVE DONE SO MUCH ILL AND SO LITTLE GOOD, by William Easterly, 2007

POSITION OF ALIENS IN RELATION TO THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, by Helene Lambert, 2006

CRIME, SOCIAL CONTROL AND HUMAN RIGHTS: FROM MORAL PANICS TO STATES OF DENIAL: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF STANLEY COHEN, ed. David Downes, 2007

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE EMPOWERMENT OF MARGINALISED GROUPS: PERSPECTIVES AND STRATEGIES, ed. Debal K. Singharoy, 2001

INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, by Thomas George Weiss, 2006

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY: PRACTITIONERS AND THEIR CRAFT, ed. Larry Minear, 2007

 Indigenous People 

TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT ABORIGINAL HISTORY, by Bain Attwood, 2005

HONOUR AMONG NATIONS?: TREATIES AND AGREEMENTS WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, ed. Marcia Langton, 2005

INDIGENOUS EXPERIENCE: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES, ed. Roger C.A. Maaka, 2006

INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND UNITED NATIONS STANDARDS: SELF-DETERMINATION, CULTURE AND LAND, by Alexandra Xanthaki, 2007

 Torture 

PHENOMENON OF TORTURE: READINGS AND COMMENTARY, ed. William F. Schulz, 2007

AMERICAN TORTURE: FROM THE COLD WAR TO ABU GHRAIB AND BEYOND, by Michael Otterman, 2007

 Russia and Chechnya 

RUSSIA’S ISLAMIC THREAT, by Gordon M. Hahn, 2007

CHECHNYA: FROM NATIONALISM TO JIHAD, by James Hughes, 2007

CHECHNYA: LIFE IN A WAR-TORN SOCIETY, by Valerii Aleksandrovich Tishkov, 2004

  Health 

READINGS IN COMPARATIVE HEALTH LAW AND BIOETHICS, by Timothy S. Jost, 2007

Sex and Gender 

LIMITS OF BODILY INTEGRITY: ABORTION, ADULTERY, AND RAPE LEGISLATION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, by Ruth Austin Miller, 2007

SEXUAL POLITICS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: THE NEW FEMINIST CHALLENGE, ed. R. Amy Elman, 1996

SEXUAL SUBORDINATION AND STATE INTERVENTION: COM- PARING SWEDEN AND THE UNITED STATES, by R. Amy Elman, 1996

LAW AND SEXUALITY: THE GLOBAL ARENA, ed. Carl F. Stychin, 2001

POLITICS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE UNITED STATES, THE EUROPEAN UNION, AND GERMANY, by Kathrin S. Zippel, 2006

SEXUALITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A GLOBAL OVERVIEW, ed. Helmut Graupner, 2005

  Nigeria 

WOMEN AND CONFLICT IN THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR, by Egodi Uchendu, 2007

BIAFRA REVISITED, by Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, 2007

SURVIVING IN BIAFRA: THE STORY OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR, by Alfred Obiora, Uzokwe, 2003