Past Events

Outside of the weekly tabling we do in Commons, Yale Amnesty International consistently holds a number of events every semester by itself as well as in partnership with other organizations at Yale. The following are just some of the events that we have brought to campus. For a sampling of flyers from our past events, visit our Facebook page here.

 

Spring 2011

International Human Rights Film Festival

This film festival was a three-day event featuring five great human rights documentaries. The featured films included No More Tears Sister (Sri Lanka), War Don Don (Sierra Leone), Divided We Fall (USA), Out in the Silence (USA), and Burma VJ (Burma).

Fall 2010

The Holocaust in the Soviet Union

This discussion of history, international law, justice, and human experience featured Joshua Rubenstein, Director of Amnesty International’s Northeast Region and a Fellow at the Harvard DavisCenter for Russian and Eurasian Studies, as well as Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale. It was moderated by Rabbi James Ponet, the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. The event was cosponsored by Jews for Justice and Yale Hillel.

Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want: What’s Next for the Human Rights Movement?

This Saybrook College Master’s Tea featured Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty USA.

The Future of Capital Punishment: A Panel Discussion on the Death Penalty

Surrounding momentum to abolish the death penalty in Connecticut, this panel featured impressive speakers and experienced great turnout of over one hundred attendees. Panelists included Larry Cox, Executive Director of Amnesty USA; Juan Melendez, the 99th individual exonerated from death row; and Representative Gary Holder-Winfield of New Haven’s 94th Assembly District. Reverend Ian Oliver, Senior Associate Chaplain for Protestant Life, moderated the discussion. Cosponsors included Yale Law School, the Yale Chaplain’s Office, the Connecticut Network to Abolish the Death Penalty, Saint Thomas More Catholic Chapel and Center at Yale, Yale ACLU, and Black Student Alliance at Yale.

Democracy in Burma: Panel and Open Forum

Panelists for this event, sponsored by the Council on Southeast Asia Studies, included James Scott (Yale), U Gawsita (All Burma Monks Society), Myra Dahgaypaw (US Campaign for Burma), and U Kyaw Zan Tha (Voice of America).

Women Human Rights Defenders Candlelight Vigil

Part of the 16 Days Campaign’s Global Day of Action Against Violence Against Women and Militarism, this candlelight vigil featured the Yale and New Haven communities coming together to support and commemorate women human rights defenders. Speakers included Elisabeth Wood, Yale Political Science, who spoke about her research on sexual violence during wartime, and Ana Paula Hernandez, a Yale World Fellow and Mexican human rights defender who spoke about violence and militarism in the context of her work combating narcotrafficking. The Yale Women’s Slavic Chorus also performed.

Write-A-Thon 2010

The write-a-thon featured letter writing, snacks, and good friends. We wrote letters promoting human rights causes around the world in the context of particular individuals’ cases.

Spring 2010

Human Rights Bluebooking Party

This shopping week event served as a time for member recruitment at the beginning of the semester, but also a fun time to look at classes, write some letters for the release of prisoners of conscience, and hang out with Amnesty friends!

The Obama Administration and Human Rights: Reality versus Reputation

This panel featured Charles Hill, policy advisor and diplomat; Lucas Guttentag, founder of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU; and Sarah Snyder, diplomatic historian and scholar of human rights policy.

Fall 2009

Master's Tea with Tom Parker

We had the honor of hosting Tom Parker (Policy Director for Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA) for a Master's tea, dinner, as well as an intimate dining hall luncheon. We were heavily engaged with and learned much from the discussion of his many great experiences with terrorisim, counterterrorism, and human rights throughout the world.

 

He was previously Executive Director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in New Haven, Connecticut and has worked extensively during the past five years as a consultant on post-conflict justice issues for clients such as USAID, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute on projects in Darfur, Iraq, Russia and Georgia. Tom has also served as a war crimes investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as a counterterrorist official with the British government.

 

Tom has held adjunct lectureships with both Yale University’s Residential College Seminar Program and Bard University’s Globalization and International Affairs Program teaching courses on trends in international terrorism and counter-terrorism. He has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS) serving as an instructor on counterterrorism training programs in countries as diverse as Mexico, Peru, Rwanda, Nepal, Albania, Thailand, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of Leiden and Brown.

Film Screening of Armes, Trafic, & Raison d’etat

A French documentary subtitled in English highlighting the work of Amnesty International to investigate the globalized arms sell and transfer of arms in third world countries, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Arms dispersal in the Congo to various militias fuels the deadliest conflict in civilian casualties since World War II, totaling 5 million deaths in the last decade. A Congo Month event.

War Crimes Trials! What are they good for?

This discussion of the negative consequences of prosecuting war crimes in international law for human rights featured Robert Hayden, anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh, expert in the former Yugoslavia.