Human Rights Happy Hour Speaker Biographies
Fall 2009
Lisa Hajjar is Associate Professor and Department Chair of Law and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her main research interest is torture, along with war and conflict, and other forms of violence. She began her academic career working on the Israeli military court system in the West Bank and Gaza. Since 9/11, that background has provided Hajjar with good preparation to focus on the “war on terror.” She is currently writinig a book that analyzes the roles that lawyers have played in contesting the “legalization” of torture by the Bush administration, and their ongoing efforts to re-delegitimize the odious practice. Her subjects include military, human rights and private practice lawyers who have been involved, in various ways, in representing detainees or bringing suits to challenge policies and practices that violate international and federal laws.
Murhabazi Namegabe heads the child and youth programmes for the Congolese NGO — Bureau pour le Volontariat au Sevice de l’Enfance et de la Santé (Volunteer Office in the Service of Children and Health or BVES). Through BVES, Dr. Namegabe promotes the rights of children affected by armed conflict and supports grassroots organizations in monitoring, documenting, and reporting on children's rights violations in eastern Congo. Dr. Namegabe's risky and difficult negotiations with armed rebels to release conscripted children and to cease armed conflict have steadily and quietly improved the lives of thousands. Due to his careful documentation and advocacy, child recruitment is now a crime under Congolese military and national law. In the fall 2009, he will receive the Oscar Romero Award from The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Read more here.
Gillian Slovo is a South African born novelist, the daughter of Joe Slovo, leader of the South African Communist party, and Ruth First, a journalist who was murdered in 1982. She has lived in England since 1964, working as a writer, journalist and film producer. Her first novel, Morbid Symptoms (1984), began a crime fiction series featuring female detective Kate Baeier. Her other novels include Ties of Blood (1989), The Betrayal (1991) and Red Dust (2000), a courtroom drama set in contemporary South Africa, which explores the effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country (1997) is a moving account of her childhood in South Africa and her relationship with her parents, both heavily involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Ice Road (2004), set in Leningrad in 1933, explores an Arctic winter in Stalin's Russia; family ties, love and loyalty are all tested to the limits, uncovering the dark effects of Soviet communism on the human spirit. It was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. Slovo's most recent novel is Black Orchids (2008), about a Sinhalese family who move to England in the 1950s.
Sarah Snyder is Cassius Marcellus Clay Fellow in the History Department at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 2006 and specializes in transnational, international, transatlantic, and diplomatic history. She earned a M.A. from the University College London in 2000 and a B.A. with honors from Brown University in 1999. She previously served as the Pierre Keller Post Doctoral Fellow in Transatlantic Relations at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale and as a Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown. While the Keller Fellow, she worked on a manuscript analyzing the development of a transnational network devoted to human rights advocacy and its significant contributions to the end of the Cold War. As a Clay Fellow, Dr. Snyder researches United States human rights policy during the Cold War.
