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January 18, 2023
Posted
by Gerald L. Neuman
It was shocking to learn that the Kennedy School had vetoed the appointment of Kenneth Roth, a towering figure in human rights advocacy, as a fellow at the Carr Center. Roth led Human Rights Watch for three decades before stepping down in 2022. More shocking was the reported reason — retaliation for criticism of Israel by Roth and his NGO. Human Rights Watch is widely known and greatly admired for the quality of its research and its candid attention to the failings of all states. No government should be immune from such inquiry. Dismissing substantive and carefully analyzed critique as bigotry is a tactic of authoritarian regimes, unworthy of a major university. In this time of populist threats to human rights, Harvard should be supporting and welcoming human rights defenders, and letting their ideas be explained and rationally debated, not ostracizing them. In a world where human rights defenders and scholars all too often face reprisal for their work, including through the restriction of future prospects and opportunities, the action of the Kennedy School sends the wrong message to everyone in the human rights field, and to authoritarian actors at home and around the world.
Gerald L. Neuman is Director of the Human Rights Program, as well as the J. Sinclair Armstrong Professor of International, Foreign, and Comparative Law at Harvard Law School. He teaches courses in international human rights law, immigration and nationality law, and U.S. constitutional law. From 2011 to 2014, he served as a Member of the UN Human Rights Committee.
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