Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series

In This Section

The Center for International Law and Policy (CILP) launched in 2021 a Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series in collaboration with other institutions of higher learning, academic centers and civil society groups.

The series aims to raise national awareness of Transitional Justice (TJ) initiatives being developed now on a regular basis across the country in order to address racial injustice. It will offer a sustained forum that encourages an open dialogue about the benefits, accomplishments as well as challenges experienced by these initiatives. Ultimately the series aims to contribute to the growing national movement to seek redress for racial injustice in the USA.

Past Panels

Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series Playlist: All Panels

Part I (2020-2021)

PANEL 1 (INAUGURAL PANEL) - COMPARATIVE LESSONS: WHAT IS TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE AND HOW HAS IT WORKED IN OTHER COUNTRIES?

Our inaugural panel, held on Tuesday, February 23rd, launched our ongoing TJ in the USA Speakers Series. This event started the conversation surrounding if and how the TJ model might work in the United States, and whether or not international experiences should be relevant to local U.S. initiatives calling for truth, reparations and justice.

Featuring:

Sally Avery Bermanzohn - Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College, CUNY & participant in the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Igor Cvetkovski - Senior Advisor on Reparations to the Global Survivors Fund
Eduardo Gonzalez - Research Affiliate, Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation, former member of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Pablo de Greiff - Director of the Transitional Justice Program and the Prevention Project at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law & Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence
Sarah Kasande - Head of Office, International Center for Transitional Justice in Uganda
Yasmin Sooka – Former member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission & Sierra Leone

WATCH THE RECORDING

PANEL 2 - HOW DO WE BUILD COLLABORATIVE MODELS FOR A TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE PROCESS?

This panel explores how human rights and academic institutions, and their affiliates, can best support an existing grassroots network of racial justice advocates working on themes related to Transitional Justice in the United States in ways that do not replicate the same predominant power structures these movements seek to dismantle.

Moderator:

Ashley Quarcoo - Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict and Governance Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace & Visiting Fellow, SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins

Panelists:

Dr. David Ragland - Co-founder & Co-Executive Director of the Truth Telling Project and the Director of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign
Jodie Geddes - Healing Circles Manager, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) and Co-manager, Coming to the Table
Professor Jennifer Llewellyn - Yogis and Keddy Chair in Human Rights Law, Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, Canada
Christine Diindiisi McCleave - Chief Executive Officer, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

WATCH THE RECORDING

Part II (2021-2022)

Panel 1 - How do we honor indigenous ways of knowing in the quest for truth, justice and healing for American Indian boarding schools?

This panel will focus on past and recent truth initiatives on the forced assimilation of Native children through boarding schools and the child welfare system. Indigenous leaders will reflect on the experience of the Maine Wabanaki-Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Federal bill to create a national truth commission and the official investigations launched by the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland this past summer, upon the revelation of mass graves located at boarding schools. The panel will explore how to open the way to transformative justice, overcoming standardized or colonized transitional justice models. The panel is convened in recognition of Native American Heritage Month.

Moderator/Discussant:

Professor Cheryl Suzack (Batchewana First Nations), Associate Professor at the Department of English and Aboriginal Studies Program, Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto

Panelists:

Christine Diindiisi McCleave, Chief Executive Officer, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

Sandy White Hawk, former Commissioner for the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission & founder and Director of First Nations Repatriation (FNRI)

Brenda Gunn, Academic and Research Director from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada and Professor, University of Manitoba, Faculty of Law

Watch the Recording

Panel 2 - Does Criminal Punishment of Police Contribute or Distract from Societal Reckonings with Racism?

While many celebrated Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd as a sign of progress, others worried that it would distract from the systemic change needed to combat racism in policing and put the focus instead on a few “bad apples.” Such considerations about criminal punishment are familiar to transitional justice scholars and activists who have long debated the appropriate aim and reach of criminal accountability in transitioning societies. On one hand, some have argued there is a duty to prosecute all involved in mass atrocity, while on the other hand critics have been concerned that criminal punishment reinforces an individualized and decontextualized understanding of harms and diminishes the likelihood of more profound transformation.

This panel will contextualize these debates by centering the role of police accountability in the much needed racial reckoning in the United States and discussing both the potential benefits and limitations of prosecuting police for racial violence. In particular, the panel will explore whether criminal accountability has lived up to its promise in other transitioning contexts and what lessons we can learn from those examples that might be applicable in the United States.

Moderator:

Rachel Lopez - Associate Professor of Law, Drexel University, Thomas R. Kline School of Law

Panelists:

Roxanna Altholz - Clinical Professor of Law and Co-Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic, Berkeley Law School
Nikki Grant - Policy Director and Co-Founder, Amistad Law Project
Darryl Heller - Director of the IU South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center and Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Indiana University South Bend
Helen Mack Chang - President and Founder, Myrna Mack Foundation

Co-organized by the Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, the International Human Rights Section of the Association of American Law Schools, and the Transitional Justice and Rule of Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.

Watch the Recording

Part III (2022- 2023)

PANEL 1- IS TENDING TO THE MENTAL HEALTH OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS AS GOOD FOR THE CAUSE AS IT IS FOR THE CRUSADER?

This panel explores the importance of focusing on mental health strategies to build resilience of human rights defenders engaged in racial justice work in the U.S. and assure the vitality and success of social transformation movements. More often transitional justice processes take a backward-looking focus on how to heal the trauma of survivors but overlook the need to tend to the mental well-being of the survivor-activists seeking justice. This oversight leads to burn-out, depression and other mental health challenges that weaken the crusade for truth, reparations and justice. Drawing from national and international experiences, the speakers will share the wide range of community-driven strategies used to support and build resilience of local human rights defenders.

Co-organizers: Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma, and Mindbridge.

MODERATOR:

Laura Ligouri - Founder and Executive Director of Mindbridge

SPEAKERS:

Teiahsha Bankhead, Ph.D., LCSW - Executive Director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY)

Donivan Brown - Founder and Director of the Horton-Keller Center for Traumatic Healing

Dr. Yael Danieli - clinical psychologist, victimologist, pioneer traumatologist founded the International Center for the Study, Treatment and Prevention of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma (ICMGLT)

Sheryl Evans Davis - Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission

Laura Ligouri - Executive Director and Founder of Mindbridge

Watch the Recording

PANEL 2- HOW CAN THE U.S. BUILD A TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE PROCESS THAT RECKONS WITH CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN AND PERPETUATION OF RACIAL INJUSTICE AND VIOLENCE?

As is true in other nations, efforts in the United States to push for racial reckoning rarely focus on the role of the private sector despite the role of companies in historical episodes of racial exploitation and atrocity, which left a legacy that continues to benefit corporations today. This panel explores this theme by discussing how private industry in the U.S. was built on the labor of enslaved Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, which today continues through mass incarceration and prison labor which often amounts to forced labor. The speakers will examine how this contemporary problem arises out of a failure to recognize and interrogate the role played by the private sector to perpetuate racial exploitation and atrocity dating back to the founding of the nation and its economic model. Speakers will offer comparative and recent international efforts to implement robust transitional justice mechanisms to include economic actors complicit in human rights violations to explore the role businesses must play in the U.S. process, including strategies to hold corporations accountable.

Co-organizers: Center for International Law and Policy at New England Law | Boston, The Corporate Accountability Lab and the Tanner Humanities Center at The University of Utah.

MODERATOR:

Avery Kelly-Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL), where she works with affected communities and social justice lawyers to seek justice for human rights abuses committed by multinational companies.

PANELISTS:

Tatiana Devia-Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) where she leads CAL's Transitional Justice work

Daniel Rosen-Writer and justice reform advocate who was incarcerated in both Virginia and Washington, D.C. from 2015 to 2021. Prior to incarceration, Daniel spent almost twenty years in public service, in both the non-profit and governmental sectors.

Anita Sinha-Associate Professor of Law and the Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC)

Lydia Wright - Associate Director of Civil Litigation at the Promise of Justice Initiative

Watch the Recording

Series Co-Sponsors

Association of American Law Schools
Center for Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, William & Mary Law School
Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Boston College Law School
Center for Justice, Law, and Societies, University of Massachusetts/Amherst
Center for Mexican Studies, UMASS/Boston
Center for Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, William H. Bowen School of Law
Civil Rights Heritage Center, Indiana University South Bend
College of Arts and Sciences, Boston University
College of Public Affairs, University of Baltimore
Drexel's Kline School of Law
Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University
Human Rights Center, Minnesota Law School
Human Rights Institute, Georgetown Law
Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut
Human Rights Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Institute for Human Rights, The University of Alabama at Birmingham
International and Comparative Law Program, Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
International Center for MultiGenerational Legacies of Trauma
International Center for Transitional Justice
International Coalition of Sites of Conscience
John Mitchell, Jr. Program for History, Justice and Race, George Mason University
Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation, George Mason University
Maryland Lynching Memorial Project
Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program, Kean University
Memria.org
Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley
Moody School of Communication, University of Texas at Austin
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition
Promise Institute for Human Rights, UCLA Law
Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University
School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University
Seattle University School of Law
Tanner Humanities Center, The University of Utah
The Center for Dispute Resolution, Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
The Pearson Institute, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
Transitional Justice-Rule of Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law
University of Illinois College of Law
War Crimes Research Office, American University Washington College of Law
Young Initiative on the Global Political Economy, Occidental College

*This series is being co-sponsored by other academic institutions as well as civil society organizations. To become a co-sponsor, contact llaplante@nesl.edu.*

Additional Background

Demands for justice reverberate across the nation at an unprecedented level and only grow upon each new revelation of the extra-judicial killing of a person of color at the hands of both police and private citizens. Less highly profiled are the everyday acts of racism, many of them also violent, that point towards a systemic problem and require a national reckoning to address the deep roots of racism in the United States.

Every day we hear increasing demands from affected communities, activists and thought leaders for criminal trials, truth commissions and reparations--all of which are approaches commonly associated with what has come to be known globally as the field of Transitional Justice. Transitional Justice describes the efforts of countless nations that sought ways to account for past episodes of systematic and generalized human rights violations perpetuated or tolerated by governments. For example, the government of South Africa established the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996 to address the serious harms caused by apartheid and in doing so brought global attention to alternative approaches to justice.

Remarkably, the United States has never engaged deeply with the Transitional Justice approach to redress its history of racial injustice. Instead, there have only been a handful of initiatives, including The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 2000 to reveal the truth about the murder of labor organizers by the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party in 1979; the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 2013 to delve into the state practice of separating Native American families. There has also been a robust and dedicated grassroots effort to pursue truth, reparations and justice that until now has not garnered the national attention it deserves.

Yet, now, for first time in U.S. history, there is a unique window of opportunity as the movement grows and is creating official truth, reparation and justice initiatives across the country at all levels: town, city, state and federal. While celebrating these advances, this series recognizes that there are still many unanswered questions about how these types of alternative justice approaches will and can work in the U.S.

The series aims to reaches a diverse audience:

• Students at academic institutions interested in learning more about not only TJ but also local racial justice initiatives in the US;

• Scholars of all disciplines already immersed or simply interested in exploring how, if at all, the TJ framework applies to the US and how the local grassroots efforts of the U.S. brings new questions, insights and challenges to the field;

• Racial justice practitioners and advocates immersed in racial justice work who seek to learn from the experiences of not only other countries but also other locations in the United States working on these issues.

The Transitional Justice in the USA Speakers Series' primary objectives are:

• To help raise awareness of Transitional Justice initiatives across the country seeking redress for racial injustice;

• To offer an ongoing forum for encouraging dialogue about the benefits and challenges to the Transitional Justice approach as it might be applied to the U.S. context;

• To encourage the sharing of experiences to increase our collective knowledge about themes related to Transitional Justice, such as truth, reparations, and a range of justice such as reparative, restorative and transformative.

The series will be organized in parts to offer panels to address a wide variety of themes that will be multi-year. The first round of discussions will focus on the general theme of the transitional justice framework and comparative international experiences and how they may, or may not, be applicable to the United States. Additionally, the start of the series will set a foundation of discussing what collaborative models in this work could and should look like.

It will continue by profiling recent initiatives to create local truth-seeking initiatives while also learning from some past experiences. Future discussions will examine themes like initiatives at the state and federal level, reparations, institutional reform, criminal justice and other relevant topics to the question of transitional justice in the United States. When possible, panels will be followed by moderated discussion groups to open up a dialogue about particular themes. We hope that afterwards we're able to make a summary of these conversations made available publicly, although observing Chatham House Rules.