Human Rights Happy Hour Speaker Series Biographies
Spring 2012
Jorge Contesse is a professor and Director of the Center for Human Rights at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, and will be a Visiting Resource Professor at the University of Texas in spring 2012. He works on human rights and indigenous issues, primarily focusing on the Mapuche community in Chile. Contesse has also been a researcher and consultant to various international organizations, such as the International Council on Human Rights Policy and Human Rights Watch. He has directed research projects focusing on indigenous populations, including a co-sponsored project by Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Miami, and Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). He also serves as editor of an annual report of human rights in Chile. His recent works include "Universally Speaking? The Cultural Challenge to Rights and Constitutionalism," "'It's Not OK': New Zealand's Efforts to Eliminate Violence against Women," and "The Rebel Democracy: A Look Into the Relationship Between the Mapuche People and the Chilean State." He is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship and Presidente de la Republica scholarship from Chile. Contesse received an LL.M. from Yale Law School.
Benjamin Gregg is an Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include social integration in complex modern societies, problems and prospects of contemporary forms of justice, coping with value pluralism, deploying contemporary sociological theory to solve problems in political philosophy, and the social, legal, and political consequences of the human species taking control of its genome. Professor Gregg is currently undertaking two book-length projects. Second Nature: The Genetic Self-Transformation of the Human Species raises and answers philosophical questions prompted in the advent of the unprecedented prospect of genetically manipulating human beings. The Human-Rights State proposes an alternative vehicle for recognizing and enforcing human rights based on positive law, a "human-rights state," in distinction to the sovereignty-fixated nation-state. In addition to his current projects, Professor Gregg has authored a number of publications, including most recently Human-Rights as Social Construction (Cambridge University Press, 2012), as well as translated and reviewed the works of other scholars. Professor Gregg received the Silver Spurs Fellowship from the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin in 1999 for outstanding scholarship and teaching and a research fellowship from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in 2008. In 2012, he received a faculty research travel award from The Center for European Studies for archival research at the Federal Commission for Documents of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. He also contributed as a guest professor at Europa Universität Viadrina in 2009 and 2012. He earned a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Free University of Berlin.
Fall 2011
Inderpal Grewal is a Professor and Chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University with joint appointments in American Studies and Anthropology. Her primary research interests include the relationship between gender and globalization, transnational and postcolonial feminist theories, civil society and non-governmental organizations, and citizenship and diaspora. Professor Grewal often focuses her work within the context of South Asian cultural studies and is currently undertaking a book project entitled The Gender of Security based on relations between gender, the state, security, and feminisms in contemporary India and the United States. She is the author of several books including an introduction to the field of transnational feminist studies in Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (ed. with Caren Kaplan; University of Minnesota Press, 1994), a study of narratives and discourses of travel in Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel (Duke University Press, 1996), an anthology on women's studies designed for undergraduate students entitled Gender in a Transnational World: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies (ed. with Caren Kaplan; McGraw Hill, 2001, 2005), and, most recently, an examination of discourses surrounding transnational subjects in Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Duke University Press, 2005). Professor Grewal actively works in several editorial and advisory capacities, most notably in service to Women's Studies Quarterly, Sikh Formations, Jouvert: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and Meridians: feminisms, race, transnationalism. Prior to assuming her current position, Professor Grewal taught at the University of California-Irvine, where she served as Director of Women's Studies and launched the Ph.D. Program in Culture and Theory. She holds an M.A. from Punjab University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley.
Catalina Smulovitz is the Director of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Professor Smulovitz's research interests include human rights, the rule of law, democratic governance, judicial mobilization, and domestic violence. Her work primarily focuses on Latin America with an emphasis on Argentina. Among her most notable publications are "Guarding the Guardians in Argentina: Some Lessons about the Risks and Benefits of Empowering the Courts," in Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (with Carlos Acuña, ed. James McAdams; University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), "Citizen Insecurity and Fear: Public and Private Responses in the Case of Argentina," in Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State (ed. Hugu Fruhling et al.; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), and "Societal and Horizontal Controls: Two Cases about a Fruitful Relationship," in Accountability, Democratic Governance, and Political Institutions in Latin America (ed. Scott Mainwaring and Christopher Welna, Oxford University Press, 2003). She is the editor (with Enrique Peruzzotti) of Enforcing the Rule of Law: Citizens and the Media in Latin America (Pittsburgh University Press, 2006). She has served as a Visiting Professor at Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) of Brown University and in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2008, Professor Smulovitz was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, an award that recognizes mid-career intellectuals with exceptional and productive scholarship as well as substantial contributions to the arts. She holds an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Universidad del Salvador-Buenos Aires and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Pennsylvania State University.
Tara J. Melish is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Human Rights Center at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School. Professor Melish's research interests include comparative approaches to the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights. She also takes part in litigation and reporting efforts before the United Nations and Inter-American human rights bodies. Several of her most significant publications include "The Inter-American Court of Human Rights: Beyond Progressivity" and "The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: Defending Social Rights Through Case-Based Petitions" in Social Rights Jurisprudence: Emerging Trends in Comparative and International Law (with Malcolm Langford; Cambridge University Press, 2008), "The UN Disability Convention: Historic Process, Strong Prospects, and Why the U.S. Should Ratify" in the Human Rights Brief (2007), "Rethinking the 'Less as More' Thesis: Supranational Litigation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Americas," in the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics (2006), and "Maximum Feasible Participation of the Poor: New Governance, New Accountability, and a 21st Century War on the Sources of Poverty," in the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal (2010). Professor Melish has previously worked in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs at the UN Secretariat and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal. In addition, Professor Melish received multiple fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale Law School. She has also contributed as a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. Professor Melish graduated with a J.D. from Yale Law School and an undergraduate degree from Brown University.
John D. Ciorciari is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His research interests include international politics, law, and finance as well as human rights, with a specific focus on Asia. Professor Ciorciari is the author of The Limits of Alignment: Southeast Asia and the Great Powers since 1975 (Georgetown University Press, 2010), in which he examines shifting power alignments to protect security interests among states in Southeast Asia. In addition to publishing several articles, he has also organized numerous edited volumes which include an examination of tribunals designed to facilitate the prosecution of surviving Khmer Rouge officials in The Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2006), a collection of essays and previously unpublished photos concerning the Khmer Rouge Tribunal process entitled On Trial: The Khmer Rouge Accountability Process (with Anne Heindel; Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2009), and, most recently, The Road Ahead for the Fed (with John Taylor; Hoover Institution Press, 2009), an account of recent actions and decisions of the Federal Reserve as well as policy prescriptions for the institution. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, he served as a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Professor Ciorciari continues to serve in a pro-bono capacity as a Senior Legal Advisor at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). He received his A.B. in Biochemistry and J.D. from Harvard University and an MPhil. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Oxford University.
Henry J. Steiner is an Emeritus Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard University. His research interests concern issues of human rights and international law. He is the founder of the Human Rights Program (HRP) at Harvard Law School, a nearly thirty-year-old program dedicated to incorporating students, faculty, and human rights organizations into the study of international human rights through applied research, regular speaker series, as well as conferences and reports. Professor Steiner is the author of several books and reports including, most recently, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics, Morals (with Ryan Goodman and Philip Alston; Oxford University Press, 2007), an interdisciplinary course book designed to provide an overview of issues related to international law and the human rights movement and to incorporate, in the most recent edition, a substantive focus on contemporary issues associated with terrorism, national security, and the influence of international actors on state behavior; two case books, Transnational Legal Problems (with Detlev Vagts and Harold Hongju Koh; Foundation Press, 1994) and Tort and Accident Law (with Page R. Keeton and L. Sargentich); a report entitled Diverse Partners: Non-Governmental Organizations in the Human Rights Movement (Human Rights Program, 1991), which was developed from a retreat coordinated by the HRP and Human Rights Internet and concerns the potential contributions and liabilities associated with non-governmental organizational alliance with human rights movements; and Moral Argument and Social Vision in the Courts (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), in which he examines, through a discussion of accident law, the structure of existing common law and potentials for legal innovation. He received his B.A. in Modern European History and Literature, M.A. in International Affairs, and LL.B. all from Harvard University.
