2014-2015 Human Rights Film Series: Come Hell or High Water

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89f65881-95da-4ba0-80dc-25ee3640b277 Wednesday February 11th, 2015

4:00pm-6:00pm

Storrs Campus

Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center

Admission is FREE

    Come Hell or High Water (2014)

This film follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who moves home to coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfport. Over the course of a decade, Derrick and his neighbor stand up to powerful corporate interests and politicians and face ordeals that include Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster in their struggle for self-determination and environmental justice.

TRAILER

Human Rights Internet and China

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Lulu Peng is a graduate student in the Communications Department at the University of Connecticut.  She interned at the Archives & Special Collections in the fall of 2014.  Her project utilized her skills in Mandarin Chinese to identify and describe content on China in the Laurie S. Wiseberg and Harry Scoble Human Rights Internet Collection.

The Collection is so extensive and to some extent, invaluable in that it records the human rights predicament and movements in different corners of the world. The correspondence, flyers, reports and publications altogether sketch a unique part of the human rights history. These materials, dating back to the late 70s, 80s and the early 90s, demonstrate each aspect of human rights struggle, against death penalty, extrajudicial execution, violence towards minorities, gender inequalities and so on. It is intriguing to observe the encounter of the essentially obscure history and the honest pieces that compose it, as shown in the letters written by the former Vice President of Taiwan, Lu Hsiu-lien to Laurie Wiseberg, and the letters to the Human Rights Internet (HRI) concerning the June Fourth Incident in Beijing 1989, for instance.

-Lulu Peng

Correspondance, Box 61Correspondance Box 61

Human Rights Institute Film Series: October 2014

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blood rising

The first installment of the HRI Films Series will begin Wednesday, October 1st with the screening of Blood Rising: Daughters of Mexico. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker Mark McLoughlin and other invited speakers.  Airing at 3:30-6:00pm in Konover Auditorium, Dodd Research Center.

Filming of Abuse, Archiving for Authenticity

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As we have seen over the last 10 years, access to portable video devices has risen in the US as well as the world over.  In 2014 alone, video footage of police brutality and homicide have overturned arrests and brought charges to those responsible. Often, human rights violations and atrocities are now being recorded by observers and activists who want their footage to be seen. WITNESS, a leading documentation advocacy organization, has produced a readily accessible document for how-to-film and archive footage for preservation and access.

Recently, head archivist and co-author of the Witness video archive, Yvonne NG, was interviewed on Democracy Now! regarding the most recent police brutality incidents in New York City and Ferguson, MO being promoted on social media.

Resources from Witness: http://witness.org/resources/

Terry Cook

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Yesterday, the Archival profession lost a giant who agitated, inspired and implemented seminal ways of stewarding history and record-keeping.  His passion for teaching and mentoring young archivists well into retirement was best vocalized in his 2010 ACA Keynote, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.”  A strong advocate for human rights and archival implications of documentation and advocating for future generations is represented in the voice he so passionately infused in his many articles and speeches given around the world. Continue reading →

Human Rights Internet and the Case of Nicaragua

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–Matt Jones is a PhD candidate in the English department at the University  of Connecticut. His work focuses on post-Enlightenment discourse in 18th- and 19th-century British literature. He has contributed to the processing and description of the Laurie S. Wiseberg and Harry Scoble Human Rights Internet and contributes research commentary on the collection to the Human Rights Archives Blog.

Box 107, Fld 2

Box 107, Fld 2

In a 1989 issue of Nicaraguan Perspectives Noam Chomsky discusses the extent of events that, for one reason or another, go unreported by the US media. Asserting that the media are in fact “corporations” themselves, he explains that “this and many other factors influence [the media] to produce a picture of the world that reflects the interests of owners, advertisers, and the privileged elements that occupy managerial positions.” To those aware of the greater American involvement in South America – and elsewhere – this claim would not have constituted a particularly eye-opening revelation. It, presumably, would be even less momentous in our post-Wikileaks society. Of course, what made Chomsky’s piece in Nicaraguan Perspectives informative were the insights of these events that he described, as these were inaccessible to a public reliant upon the Times and the Post for its news. Though Chomsky and many others continue to expose and disseminate information unacknowledged by major American media outlets, there is much more to excavate beyond what can be included in a single essay, or chapter, or op-ed. Continue reading →

Foreshadowed warnings and Unlikely Alliances

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American foreign policy in the Middle East has long been characterized by uneasy alliances with unlikely partners.  For the last decade, our partners in the region have provided important support to American military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, as the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq come to a close many academics are beginning to question whether certain alliances have been as helpful as many believe. In particular, American support for Saudi Arabia has been unwavering since the 2001 attacks despite the majority of the hijackers’ involved being Saudi nationals.  When compared with the human rights record of Saudi Arabia in basic legal proceedings one begins to question why American foreign policy personnel believe this relationship is beneficial for American image abroad.

In 1996 there was a terrorist attack on the Khobar Towers, a popular apartment building used by foreign military personnel in Khobar Saudi Arabia. Nineteen of those killed were American airmen. In response to this an open letter was written by Chandra Muzaffar (1996), Lessons from the blast: Opposition to US Alliance is strong within the kingdoms middle class.  The letter is very concise but provides an extreme amount of foresight into the future problems with United States involvement in the region. Firstly, it points out that the King of Saudi Arabia is considered the custodian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and because US policy seems to dictate much of the royal families’ actions many are beginning to view the United States as ‘the custodian of the custodian’. Information obtained from the 9/11 Commission report has indicated that many of the hijackers from Saudi Arabia were indeed middle class well- educated persons.

Continue reading →

Sugar and Strife: the Dominican Republic and Caribbean Policies in the 20th Century

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United States intervention across the South American continent largely took the form of an ideological proxy war with the Soviet Union. While these military and political conflicts varied in intensity and scope, it could be argued that U.S. engagement was never for the sake of any direct threat to national security. The same, however, cannot be said for the policies employed for the island nations of the Caribbean. While the government had the luxury of forming policy thousands of miles away, the internal affairs of nations such as Cuba, a mere 90 miles from the U.S. coast, were of large import. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had made the security concerns of the Caribbean more salient to both the American public and actors in Washington D.C.

The island nation of Cuba has long been a geopolitical thorn in the side of the United States. As a Spanish colony, Cuba represented a threat to the established “Monroe Doctrine” of western supremacy, and even as Spanish influence waned the American government sought to control the nation through economic and political actions. Following the Revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro assumed power, relations between the two nations deteriorated as his Regime aligned itself with the Soviet Union. In return for economic aid and political support, the island became a strategic position for Soviet military resources, with the Cuban army often acting as a paramilitary group in the proxy wars in South America that I have focused on in my previous posts. U.S. policies regarding Cuba underscored the need for intervention across the Caribbean in order to protect regional security interests.

Continue reading →

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April 21 - April 22, 2014
April 21 – April 22, 2014

The Archives and Special Collections in collaboration with the Dodd Center and Booklyn Artists Alliance, are hosting two days of events on War, Struggle and Visual Politics: Art on the Frontlines.  Events will be held in the Dodd Research Center on April 21st and 22nd in conjunction with the Week In Humanities.  Artists Seth Tobocman, Stephen Dupont, Marshall Weber, Chantelle Bateman and Aaron Hughes will be holding talks, workshops and presenting artwork around the focus of politics and activism in art and war.  Students, community members, veterans and artists are encouraged to attend these events to provide a dynamic facilitation of how we utilize art, activism and memory to cope with war.

Art work will be on display in galleries as follows:

Aaron Hughes : Institute for the Humanities : College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Seth Tobocman : Contemporary Art Gallery : School of Fine Art

Stephen Dupont : Coop Bookstore : Downtown Stores

For a full list of events, please follow this link for the Week in Humanities.