This episode engages with a range of themes at the intersection of human rights and medicine with Christian De Vos, Director of Research and Investigations, and Payal Shah, Director of the Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones, at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). They discuss PHR’s work gathering evidence of grave human rights abuses to advance justice processes, supporting clinicians to provide survivor-centered, trauma-informed care, and advancing advocacy to change law and policy. They cover such issues as sexual violence in armed conflict contexts, support for asylum seekers, attacks on health workers and facilities, and instances of medical professionals’ complicity in torture and cruel and inhumane treatment. De Vos and Shah draw on a range of country examples, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Syria, Ukraine, and the United States. 

This episode explores the motivations for and the consequences of Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It features Dr. Rajan Menon, CCNY’s Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair Emeritus in Political Science; Director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities; Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University; and Global Ethics Fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. Dr. Menon considers the geostrategic reasons, including NATO’s expansion, as well as potential psychological reasons for Moscow’s decision. He examines how Putin’s  war of aggression and his military’s atrocities on the ground in Ukraine have degraded Russia’s global position and the humanitarian and developmental consequences of this war for Ukraine and far beyond.  His 2015 book (with Eugene B. Rumer), Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order (Boston: MIT Press), is available as an open access PDF at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q88is5bc7593tz7/9780262029049MenonRumerConflictInUkraine.pdf?dl=0. 

This episode features Matthew Reilly, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The City College of New York, and CCNY students Catie Hernandez and Eloisa Martinez Jimenez. Prof. Reilly and his students discuss the Hostile Terrain 94 initiative, a participatory global art installation that is part of the Undocumented Migration Project. The installation, located in the North Academic Center of CCNY (160 Convent Avenue, NY, NY), features a map of the US-Mexico border and the toe tags of more than 3,200 lost migrant lives, including those who remain unidentified. Prof. Reilly and the students engage such themes as forced migration stemming from a complex combination of climate change, neoliberal policy, and state fragility, and the process of humanizing mass loss of life resulting from 21st century survival migration and US policy.  

This episode focuses on the first days of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. Louis Charbonneau, UN Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), offers insight into HRW's monitoring of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, the crackdown on antiwar protestors in Russia, the UN's multifaceted response to the conflict, and the humanitarian crisis unfolding with already hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced persons. 

This episode is devoted to examining the crime of torture. It features the President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT), Dr. Simon Adams. It delves into the erosion of international human rights and humanitarian law on a global scale as well as the work of CVT, particularly on the US Southern Border and with survivors of torture in the Middle East. Dr. Adams discusses impunity, the moral stain of Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, the gendered dimensions of torture as well as the torture of children. Dr. Adams shares his experience as an activist in the South Africa’s African National Congress and familial experience with torture in Northern Ireland. 

This episode examines the adverse human costs of neoliberal globalization, particularly the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the lives of Mexicans and the food system. Drawing on her recently published work Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico, Dr. Alyshia Gálvez—Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College, and Professor of Anthropology and the CUNY Graduate Center—illuminates the relationship between free trade, skyrocketing diet-related chronic illness in Mexico, and forced migration within and across borders. She also examines the connections between NAFTA's impacts and the rise of white nationalism in the United States and the expansive US immigrant detention system. 

This episode focuses on the US care infrastructure and gender inequality. Dr. Kathlene McDonald—Associate Professor of Literature and Writing at CCNY's Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (CWE)—considers the gaps in the US care system in comparative perspective, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. She examines President Biden’s Build Back Better plan and the precarious conditions of care workers and the challenges of family caregivers through an intersectional lens of gender, race/ethnicity, class, and legal status. She discusses her Labor of Care Archive (laborofcare.com)—a collection of stories from members of the CUNY community who undertake family and paid care work for ill, disabled, and elderly persons. As a scholar of US Literature, she explains how writing can serve as a method of healing and as a means of creating visibility to the grave human rights implications of US care policy and potentially as a catalyst for advocacy and change.

This episode focuses on the mental health challenges faced by some of the most vulnerable populations: survivors of war, sexual violence, and torture as well as forced migrants, particularly children and women. Dr. Adeyinka Akinsulure-Smith, licensed psychologist and Professor of Psychology at CCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center, discusses her research, advocacy, and clinical work with survivors of human rights abuses. She considers the particular challenges faced by the West African community in New York City, including racism and xenophobia, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and female genital mutilation/cutting practices. She also explains her research on compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress among therapists and refugee resettlement workers.

This episode is devoted to examining the right to health and health care systems in comparative perspective with Dr. Lorraine Frisina Doetter, Political Scientist and Senior Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Bremen, Senior Consultant at the World Health Organization, and editor of the Global Dynamics in Social Policy book series published by Palgrave Macmillan.  It engages the challenges and benefits of comparing Global North and Global South systems as well as the impacts of neoliberalism, aging populations, and migration, including of health care workers, on such systems. It considers the US health care system, its weaknesses, and impediments to reform as well as key global challenges regarding effective emergency response resulting from pandemics and climate change impacts. 

This episode engages the multifaceted human rights challenges faced by Haitians in the homeland and in the United States and beyond. It features Dr. Cécile Accilien, a professor and scholar of Haitian Studies and Board Member of the Haitian Studies Association, based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has published a number of books, articles, and chapters; her most recent publication is a co-edited volume (with Valérie Orlando), Teaching Haiti: Strategies for Creating New Narratives, published by University Press of Florida in July 2021. Dr. Accilien challenges dominant narratives of Haiti and places the island nation's current challenges within a larger historical and contemporary global perspective.