Culture of Human Rights
Since the devastation of the Second World War and the Holocaust, human rights has emerged as a major focus for both domestic politics and international affairs. CURA’s project on the Culture of Human Rights explores multiple aspects of the transnational effort to promote international legal standards to protect human dignity. Through conferences and support for academic research and publications, this project looks at issues such as the relationship between human rights research and academic scholarship, the legacies of the Arab Spring, and the impact of conflict and the means to prevent it. This project is directed by Timothy Longman, Shamiran Mako, and other BU professors.
In April 2021, CURA sponsored a conference to explore the legacies of the uprisings that took place in many North African and Middle Eastern countries in 2011, commonly known as the Arab Spring. Organized by Pardee School Assistant Professor Shamiran Mako, “Progress and Stagnation After the Arab Uprisings” brought together an impressive group of scholars of the region based in the United States, Canada, and the Middle East to discuss the current situation in countries from Tunisia to Iraq. A recording of the two panels is available for viewing.
Human Rights Activism and Scholarship
CURA organized a conference in September 2019 in honor of the tenth anniversary of the death of Alison Des Forges, a historian and human rights activist, whose conducted crucial work documenting the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, to explore the relationship between research by human rights organizations and academic scholarship on human rights issues. The conference started with a keynote address by Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth reflecting on the legacies of Alison Des Forges. A group of human rights researchers and academics, most of whose work focused on the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, then reflected in a series of panels on the relationship between human rights work and academic scholarship, ongoing human rights issues in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the work of Human Rights Watch in Rwanda and the region, and models for scholar-activism.
African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review
The ACPR was founded in 2011 as an initiative of the West African Research Center in Dakar, Senegal, and the West African Research Association, based at BU, to encourage the interdisciplinary scholarly exploration of conflict and peace in Africa. CURA is supporting the ACPR by funding the work of Dr. Kristen Carey, a recent BU PhD in history, as executive editor.