Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative

Background image: Silhouette of person lying down

The Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative (PCRes) is housed at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. PCRes focuses on political conflict and gendered and attendant sexualized violences at the intersections of minoritization, majoritarianism, nation-making, the racialization of difference, and decolonial responses and movements.

Interdisciplinary in practice and rooted in local knowledge, the project contends with the condition of quotidian and protracted violence and the contested terrain of social justice and people’s rights. It seek to understand how those affected/those “Othered” live with social suffering and death-bound conditions and ameliorate their effects, define mechanisms justice and accountability, seeks psychosocial healing and political solutions, and undertakes the work of archiving and memorialization. PCRes expands on methods in justice and accountability, drawing on diverse imaginaries, and situated and comparative contexts to address routinized states of emergency and exception. The Initiative works with a collaborative network of victimized-survivor-subjects, scholars, and academic and civil society leaders and institutions. PCRes focuses on the centrality of political and foundational violence in contested regions and nation-states of the (post)colony, initially with particular emphasis on South Asia.

About PCRes

ENABLING CRITICAL THOUGHT AND INQUIRY

The Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights Project, instituted in April 2012 at the Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, was precursor to the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Research Initiative. After completion of its first and successful phase, the project movedto the Center for Race and Gender (CRG) in January 2016, to further enabl interdisciplinary commitments in the next phase of its work. A pioneering, interdisciplinary research center, CRG houses research initiatives and working groups concerned with race and gender (as well as coloniality and other relations of power), allowing them to develop freely and flourish.

Temporal and spatial, landscapes of political and foundational violence contour capillaries and relations of power that are prohibitive and productive, constituting and circumscribing forms of knowledge, subjectivity and governance. In the (post)colony in South Asia, apparatuses of majoritarian, (trans)nationalist, and religionized violence and militarization assist in the securitization of nation (toward assimilation, elimination, and annihilation). Across conflict zones and spaces of mass violence, violent death and the threat of death, torture, maiming, disappearances, and dispossession function to routinize states of emergency, siege and exception. Conflict-based and upheaval-ridden political economies witness the dramatic amplification of social inequities under neoliberal, majoritarian states. Violence in conflict and upheaval is disbursed through “extrajudicial” means and those authorized by law and politics. Targeted communities and decolonial movements, too, use violence as response. Death and social death, prevalent across the culturescape and in the social sub-strata, are memorialized via language and iconography.

How are archaeologies of violence illustrative of the gendered, racialized and religionized dynamics of minoritization? How are the conditions and events of violence gendered and sexualized? How do assemblages of racialization and gendering constitute death-bound subjects? How is violence used to sustain and re-work the minoritization of an Other? What critical practices of mourning, memorialization and the sacred emerge in response to a politics of violence that agentizes multiple relations to justice, struggle, difference and accountability?

Students: PCRes provides internship opportunities for exceptional graduate students and select undergraduate students from UC Berkeley and other institutions, and from local communities. The Research Initiative engages age-appropriate youth from affected communities in the work of documenting remembrance, and creating an archive and curated presentations.

People of PCRes

Angana P. Chatterji

Co-Chair, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Research Initiative
Research Anthropologist, UC Berkeley

Angana P. Chatterji is Research Anthropologist and Founding Co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley (and Founding Co-chair of the precursor, Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights Project at the Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, 2012-2015). Chatterji leads the creation of the Archive on Legacies of Conflict in South Asia. Since April 2017, she has been a Research Fellow at the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Stanford University. Dr. Chatterji’s scholarship is witness to conditions of grief, dispossession and agency and her recent work is focused on political violence and coloniality in Kashmir and prejudicial citizenship in India and the delimits of absolute nationalism. Her research also focuses on questions of majoritarianism, belonging and legacies of conflict across South Asia. In Kashmir, Chatterji co-founded (2008), and was co-convener of (2008-2012), the People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice. She was a Member of the Drafting Committee on Minimum Standards, Second World Congress on Psychosocial Restitution in 2010. Publications include: BREAKING WORLDS: Religion, Law, and Nationalism in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam (2021); Majoritarian State: How Hindu Nationalism is Changing India (2019); Conflicted Democracies and Gendered Violence: The Right to Heal (2016); Contesting Nation: Gendered Violence in South Asia; Notes on the Postcolonial Present (2012); Kashmir: The Case for Freedom(2011);Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in India’s Present (2009); and the report, BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked and Mass Graves in Kashmir(2009).

Paola Bacchetta

Co-Chair, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Research Initiative
Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies

Paola Bachetta is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley. Her books include: Co-Motion: Situated Planetarities, Co-Formations and Co-Productions in Feminist and Queer Alliances, forthcoming, Duke University Press;Femminismi Queer Postcoloniali: critiche transnazionali all’omofobia, all’islamofobia e all’omonazionalismo(Queer Postcolonial Feminisms: Transnational Critiques of Homophobia, Islamophobia and Homonationalism), contributing co-editor with Laura Fantone, Verona, Italy: Ombre Corte, 2015; Gender in the Hindu Nation: RSS Women as Ideologues, India: Women Ink, 2004; Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists around the World, contributing co-editor with Margaret Power, New York: Routledge, 2002; Textes du Mouvement Lesbien en France, 1970-2000(Texts from the French Lesbian Movement, 1970-2000), co-editor with Claudie Lesselier, on DVD, self-published, 2011; and Global Racialities: Empire, Decoloniality and Post-Coloniality, co-edited with Sunaina Maira, forthcoming with Routledge. Professor Bacchetta has published about fifty academic journal articles and book chapters in many languages, on questions of gender, race, queer subjects, (de)colonialities, capitalism, political conflict, Islamophobia and social movements.

PCRes Distinguished Scholars

(Bios reflect scholars’ status at the time of their appointment at the Center for Race and Gender.)

Zuleikha Chaudhari

Zuleikha Chaudhari is Director of the Alkazi Theatre Archives at the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts in New Delhi, and has been Visiting Faculty at the Dramatic Art and Design Academy, New Delhi; National School of Drama, New Delhi; and Ashoka University, Haryana. Through installation and performance, her research and expression frame the structures and codes of performance and the function of the actor and viewer as intervention and resistance. Chaudhari majored in Theatre Directing and Light Design from Bennington College, Vermont. Her awards include: The India Today Art Award (2018) for Landscape as Evidence: Artist as Witness (Best Artistic Collaboration) and Sangeet Natak Academy (National Award) Yuva Puruskar (2007). She has participated in residency programs at DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program-Berliner Künstlerprogramm (2019); School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London (2017); and Nirox Residency in South Africa (2013). Her work in theater direction includes: “The Ideal Spectator: Open auditions at Tate Modern,” 2018, and “Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case,” Mumbai Art Room (2015), Kochi Biennale (2016), and Dhaka Art Summit (2018). Selected articles by Chaudhari include: ‘Rehearsing the Witness: The Bhawal Court Case [Testimony and Evidence]’, Portable Gray 2, No. 2 (2019): 196-214; and on her work include: Sheikh, Shela. “More-than-Human Cosmopolitics,” in Propositions for Non-Fascist Living: Tentative and Urgent, edited by Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas (BAK and MIT Press, 2019), 125-140.

Mihir Desai

Mihir Desai is Senior Counsel, Supreme Court of India, and the Mumbai High Court. Desai is co-founder of the Indian People’s Tribunal and the Human Rights Law Network, and the former Director of the India Center for Human Rights and Law. Desai is co-editor of Combat Law, a magazine focusing on human rights, law, and political analysis. He is co-editor of the book, Women and Law (1999). He has worked on issues of fake encounter and custodial killing, police brutality, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the rights of activists and prisoners of conscience, state excesses, mass disappearances, mass murders, torture, and genocide probes, security legislation, sexual assault and rape, and cases of survivors of Gujarat 2002. Together with Angana Chatterji, he co-convened the Indian People’s Tribunal on Communalism in Orissa, which investigated religionized violence in the state in 2005-2006, and was legal counsel to the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir, founded in 2008. Since 2019, Desai has been a defense lawyer in the Bhima Koregaon case, and for various other civil society leaders and public intellectuals.

Haley Duschinski

Haley Duschinski is a Distinguished Scholar (non-resident), Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Duschinski is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for International Studies at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. A Critical Kashmir Studies scholar, her research focuses on law, violence, war, power, human rights and international justice in Kashmir. Her recent publications include the Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Kashmir Studies (co-edited; Palgrave 2023), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (co-edited; Routledge 2022), and Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (co-edited; U Penn Press 2018). She has also co-edited special issues of the Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law on comparative studies of occupation (2018), Critique of Anthropology on occupation and settler colonialism (2020), and Himalaya on war and suffering in Kashmir (2020). Her current book project is titled Terror Legalities: Law, Legitimacy, and Sovereignty in Kashmir. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University.

Parvez Imroz

Parvez Imroz is a Distinguished Scholar (non-resident), Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Imroz is a Member of the Bar (Advocate) at the Jammu and Kashmir High Court and Founding President, Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). Imroz has been working to secure human rights and equality before the law in Kashmir since the late 1980s. He has initiated and led formative campaigns for human rights in a context of impunity and grave rights violations: including gendered and sexualized violence, torture, rapes, enforced disappearances, and extrajudicial executions. Imroz has filed thousands of habeas corpus actions on behalf of families whose relatives have disappeared while in state custody. In 1994, he founded the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), which brings together hundreds of Kashmiri families whose members have been subjected to enforced disappearances. In 2008, Imroz and Angana Chatterji co-convened the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK) and its formative report is entitled: BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir(link is external) (2009). He is a contributing author of numerous reports, including: Structures of Violence (2012); Terrorized: Impact of Violence on the Children of Jammu and Kashmir (2018); and Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir (2019). Imroz is a recipient of the Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize by Human Rights Institute of The Bar of Bordeaux, France and the European Bar Human Rights Institute. In 2017, Imroz was awarded the Rafto Prize.

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot is a Distinguished Scholar (non-resident), Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Jaffrelot is a Senior Research Fellow at Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales at Sciences Po, Paris; Research Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the India Institute, King’s College, London.

Khurram Parvez*

Khurram Parvez is a Distinguished Scholar (non-resident), Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Parvez is Chairperson of the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances(link is external) and Program Coordinator, Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and a human rights defender. Parvez was gravely injured in April 2004, when the vehicle he was travelling in during a fieldwork trip was hit in an IED explosion, leading to the death of two colleagues and the eventual amputation of his right leg. In 2007, his pioneering work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) led to the signing of the Unilateral Declaration of Mine Ban by the United Jehad Council, an amalgam of various militant organizations operating in India-Administered Kashmir. In 2006, Khurram received the Reebok Human Rights Award. From December 2005 to April 2006, Parvez was a Chevening Fellow at University of Glasgow, UK. In 2009, he participated in the United States Government’s International Visitors’ Leadership Program. In 2008, with Angana Chatterji and Parvez Imroz, Khurram Parvez was a founding member of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK). He is a contributing author of numerous reports, including: BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir(link is external) (2009); Structures of Violence (2012); Terrorized: Impact of Violence on the Children of Jammu and Kashmir (2018); and Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir (2019).

*Since November 2021, Parvez has been unable to continue his work as a Distinguished Scholar as he remains in the custody of the State of India.

PCRes Research Fellows

(Bios reflect fellows’ status at the time of their appointment at the Center for Race and Gender.)

Niha Masih

Niha Masih, Research Fellow (non-resident), Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Masih is a Staff Writer with The Washington Post based in Seoul covering urgent stories unfolding across the world. Previously, she was the India Correspondent for The Post in New Delhi. She specializes on issues of political and cultural life at the intersections of political conflict, race, gender and nationalism. Her formative and in-depth reporting from South Asia has featured on the front page of the newspaper, helping shape American and international understandings of a crucial region. She has an M.A. in Politics and Global Affairs from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, an M.A. in Convergent Journalism from Jamia University, and a B.A. from Lady Shriram College, University of Delhi. She has reported from a dozen countries, and in her work with The Post since 2019, she has written over 400 stories. She is the recipient of various significant awards, including the George Polk Award for technology reporting as part of The Post’s Pegasus Project team and the South Asia Journalists Association’s Daniel Pearl Award.

PCRes Research Affiliates

(Bios reflect status at the time of their appointment at the Center for Race and Gender.)

Pei-hsuan Wu

Pei-hsuan Wu is a Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on critical and intersectional issues relating to Hindu nationalism and its influence on California textbooks, historical revisionism, and nationalism. She has worked and assisted on research and advocacy related to issues in South Asia and its Diasporas, including political and gendered violence, Hindu nationalism, the weaponization of security and citizenship laws against minorities and dissidents in
India, and human rights, law, and justice in Indian-administered Kashmir. She has an EdD from the University of San Francisco, an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a B.A. in Environmental Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Raqib Hameed Naik

Raqib Hameed Naik is a Research Scholar, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a multimedia journalist with nearly a decade of reporting experience in India, Indian- administered Kashmir, China, and the United States. His work focuses on political conflict, human rights, religious minorities, refugees, press freedom, and the environment, and Hindu nationalism. Naik is the founder of Hindutva Watch, a research and documentation project that investigates the rise of Hindu nationalism and its targeting of religious minorities in India. His words, photographs, and documentaries have appeared or been quoted or used by Al Jazeera, The Nation Magazine, The Wire, Caravan Magazine, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, France 24, South China Morning Post, and The Guardian. He holds an M.A. in Multimedia Journalism from the University of Bolton; Greater Manchester, and an M.A. from Jamia University.

Moosa Izzat

Moosa Izzat is a Research Associate, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley. He is enrolled in the LLM (Master of Law) Program in Human Rights at the University of Edinburgh and holds a B.A. LLB (Honors) from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata. His work focuses on the intersections of citizenship, states, the law.

PCRes Publications

Title	Author	Year	Publication type
Gendered and Sexual Violence in and beyond South Asia	Angana P. Chatterji	2016	Journal Article, 2016
BREAKING WORLDS: Religion, Law and Citizenship in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam	Angana P. Chatterji; Mihir Desai; Harsh Mander; Abdul Kalam Azad	2021	Monograph, 2021

PCRes Events

Political Conflict and Accountability in South Asia

04.26.2023 | 4 - 5:30 PM | 370 Dwinelle Hall - Click here to register.

Political Conflict and Accountability in South Asia
with Saman Zia-Zarifi (Executive Director, Physicians for Human Rights; and Former Secretary General, International Commission of Jurists) and Christine Chung (Human Rights Expert).

The panel explores the heightening of political conflict and the use of law by nationalist and far-right cultures and movements in South Asia today in areas where state and vigilante actions pose majoritarian groups as authentic and those non-dominant as “Others” as “anti-nationals”, “insurrectionists” and “outsiders”. The panel examines the weaponization of religion and racialization of difference and the use of political violence--sanctioned through deep impunity and exclusionary changes to the law, and repressive government—and explores the need for accountability to political conflict in South Asia.

Saman Zia-Zarifi and Christine Chung will be joined in conversation with Angana P. Chatterji (Research Anthropologist and Co-chair of Political Conflict, Gender and People's Rights Initiative, Center for Race & Gender), Laurel E. Fletcher (Chancellor's Clinical Professor of Law, and Co-Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic. Berkeley Law), and Leti Volpp (Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice at Berkeley Law, and Director of the Center for Race & Gender).
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Hosted by CRG's Political Conflict, Gender and People's Rights Initiative. Co-sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Clinic at Berkeley Law, and The Hon. G. William And Ariadna Miller Institute For Global Challenges And The Law.

Monograph Release -- “Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship In Majoritarian India; The Story Of Assam”

09.09.2021| 9:00 – 10:30 AM | Virtual - Zoom Webinar

Join us for a virtual event to release the monograph, BREAKING WORLDS: Religion, Law, Citizenship in Majoritarian India; The Story of Assam with a keynote from Dr. Navi Pillay (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2008-2014 and Judge Ad Hoc International Court of Justice (The Gambia v. Myanmar), with panel chair Michael Kugelman (Woodrow Wilson Center), and monograph author and contributors Dr. Angana P. Chatterji (UC Berkeley Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative), Mihir Desai (Legal Scholar & Human Rights Counsel), Dr. Harsh Mander (Human Rights Advocate & Author), and Abdul Kalam Azad (Scholar).

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Presented by the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative, Center for Race and Gender at UC Berkeley. Co-sponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley.

READ - Click here to download “Breaking Worlds: Religion, Law and Citizenship In Majoritarian India; The Story Of Assam”

The Practice Of Freedom: Impunity, Justice, And The Law

11.27.2018| 5:00 – 6:30 PM | Goldberg Room, 297 Simon Hall, Berkeley Law

The Practice Of Freedom: Impunity, Justice, And The Law
with Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights, 2008-2014 And Judge On The International Criminal Court, 2003-2008

Judge Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay will speak to her work spanning the struggle for freedom in South Africa, on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, on the International Criminal Court, and as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, including her current work on international justice and against the death penalty.

Opening remarks by:
Professor Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice at Berkeley Law and Director, Center for Race and Gender

Moderated by:
Angana Chatterji, Founding Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights and Visiting Research Anthropologist, Center for Race and Gender

Discussants:
Professor Abdul R. JanMohamed, Department of English

Professor Mariane C. Ferme, Anthropology and African Studies and Curator of African Ethnology at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Professor Paola Bacchetta, Gender and Women’s Studies and Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights

Professor Managay Reddi, Dean and Head of the School of Law, University of Kwazulu-Natal at Durban and Advocate of the High Court of South Africa

Professor Christoph Safferling, Chair for Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, International Criminal Law and Public International Law, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg

BIO
Judge Pillay was raised in apartheid South Africa. Of the Tamil Diaspora, her grandparents were indentured to South Africa from the Madras Presidency in colonized India in the late nineteenth century. Navi Pillay grew up with a passionate dedication to challenge and remedy injustice. Dr. Pillay was the first non-white woman to start a law practice in her home in Natal in 1967. During the 28-years she worked as a “colored” lawyer, Navi Pillay had not been permitted to set foot in a judge’s chambers. She provided legal defense for opponents of apartheid, including members of the African National Congress, Unity Movement, Black Consciousness Movement and Azanian People’s Organization. In 1973, Pillay won the right for political prisoners on Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela, to have access to lawyers. She worked as a lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and was later appointed Vice-President of the Council of the University of Durban Westville. She contributed to the inclusion of an equality clause in the constitution of South Africa in her capacity as a member of the Women’s National Coalition in South Africa. In 1995, Dr. Pillay was appointed Acting Judge in the High Court of South Africa, by appointment of then President Nelson Mandela. She was the first woman of color and first attorney to serve on the bench. In 1995, Dr. Pillay was elected by the United Nations General Assembly to serve as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a post she held for eight years, including as its president between 1999 and 2002. In this role, she is best remembered for the ruling that rape and sexual assault constitute acts of genocide, stating: “Rape had always been regarded as one of the spoils of war,” “Now it is a war crime, no longer a trophy.” In 2003, she was elected by the Assembly of State Parties, The Hague, as a judge on the International Criminal Court, a post she held until 2008. Thereafter, Judge Pillay served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from September 2008-2014. Her responsibilities, she said, demanded she work for no less than the full protection of all human rights for all individuals – civil and political rights, economic and social rights – especially for neglected groups, such as women, children, minorities, migrants, indigenous people, those with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Dr. Pillay received a BA and a LLB from Natal University South Africa and holds a Master of Law and a Doctorate of Juridical Science from Harvard University. She is the recipient of the Commandeur de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur (award of Commander in the French Legion of Honor, 2016) and numerous honorary doctorates, including from Durham University, City University of New York School of Law, London School of Economics and Tufts University. Judge Pillay co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused in South Africa and Equality Now, an international women’s rights organization, and has been involved with organizations working on issues relating to children, detainees, victims of torture and of domestic violence, and a range of economic, social and cultural rights.

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Co-sponsored by the International Human Rights Law Clinic, Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, UC Berkeley School of Law, and the University of Kwazulu-Natal at Durban.

What Is “Populism”? From Zombie Neoliberalism To Racial Nationalism In Global Right Organizing

04.11.2018| 5:00 – 6:30 PM | 370 Dwinelle Hall

What Is “Populism”? From Zombie Neoliberalism To Racial Nationalism In Global Right Organizing
with Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Presided and Moderated by: Professor Paola Bacchetta, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies; Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race & Gender, UC Berkeley

Speaker Introduced by: Angana Chatterji, Visiting Research Anthropologist and Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley

BIO
Lisa Duggan is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. She is also the coeditor of Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest and author of Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence, and American Modernity, which won the John Boswell Prize of the American Historical Association in 2001.

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Presented by CRG's Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project. Co-sponsored by the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, Geography Department, English Department, and the Program in Critical Theory.

Advancing Human Rights in a Rightward World: Challenges for International Institutions and Civil Society

04.03.2017 | 5:00 – 6:30 PM | Goldberg Room, 297 Simon Hall, Berkeley Law

Advancing Human Rights in a Rightward World: Challenges for International Institutions and Civil Society
with Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights, 2008-2014 And Judge On The International Criminal Court, 2003-2008

Opening Remarks: Paul Alivisatos, Vice Chancellor for Research and Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, UC Berkeley

Introductions by Angana P. Chatterji, Visiting Research Anthropologist and Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, UC, Berkeley

Moderated by Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, UC, Berkeley

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Co-sponsored by University of California, Berkeley -- Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Human Rights Center, Berkeley School of Law. Institute for South Asia Studies. International and Area Studies, International Human Rights Law Clinic, Berkeley School of Law, Miller Institute For Global Challenges and the Law, Berkeley School Of Law, CRG's Research Working Group - Muslim Identities and Cultures, the Townsend Center, Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, and the WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice, at Stanford University.

Sambo: A (Post)Colonial (Mis)Education

11.10.2016 | 5:00 – 7:00 PM | Maude Fife Room, Hearst Annex D-37, UC Berkeley

Sambo: A (Post)Colonial (Mis)Education
with Abdul R. JanMohamed, English

Speaker Introduced by: Angana Chatterji, Visiting Research Anthropologist and Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley

How does the (Post)Colonial world configure its subjects? Having examined this question in the past from scholarly, critical and analytic viewpoints, Abdul R. JanMohamed now turns to the more subjective, autobiographical experiences that have triggered, conditioned and fueled his distinguished body of scholarly/critical accounts on the subject. This presentation will focus on two singular occurrences from JanMohamed’s childhood: first, being interpellated in a British boarding school as “Sambo,” a comic and pathetic creature who was nevertheless deemed capable of corrupting the morals of innocent English schoolboys; second, being configured as a death-bound-subject, one commanded to absolute silence via the deployment of violence, which was in turn invariably supplemented by the threat of death. The first correlates with Manichean Aesthetics (1983) and the second with The Death-Bound-Subject (2005).

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Hosted by the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project, Center for Race and Gender. Co-sponsored by the Center for British Studies, Department of English, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, Institute for the Study of South Asia, Townsend Center for the Humanities, and CRG's Research Working Group - Muslim Identities and Cultures.

The Dargah Culture in Ajmer Sharif: An Antidote to Hindu-Muslim Conflicts?

10.28.2016 | 3:00 – 5:00 PM | Institute for South Asia Studies Conference Room, 10 Stephens Hall

The Dargah Culture in Ajmer Sharif: An Antidote to Hindu-Muslim Conflicts?
with Christophe Jaffrelot, Senior Research Fellow at Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales at Sciences Po, Paris: Research Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the India Institute, King College, London.

Speaker Introduced by: Angana Chatterji, Visiting Research Anthropologist and Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley

The Dargah culture of Sufi saints developed around Sufi tombs and shrines from the Middle Ages onwards. The cultures of the Dargah contributed to anchoring Islam across (what is today) Indian territory. Highlighting Ajmer Sharif, this talk explores the cultural and spiritual relations of non-Muslims, including of Hindus and Hindtuva, to the cultures of the Dargah.

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Hosted by the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project, Center for Race and Gender. Co-sponsored by the Institute for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley, and the Center for South Asia at Stanford University.

Columbus Goes East: Renaming Palestine

04.12.2016 | 5:00 – 7:00 PM | Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall

Columbus Goes East: Renaming Palestine
with Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural and Arab Studies, Birzeit University and Fulbright Scholar, 2015-1016, at the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University

Discussant: Samera Esmeir, Associate Professor, Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley

Event introduced by Professor Paola Bacchetta, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, UC, Berkeley; Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights

Speaker and Discussant Introduced by Angana Chatterji, Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, UC, Berkeley, and Visiting Scholar, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

Based on an extensive photo archive of road signs, this talk interrogates the colonial politics of toponymy within historic Palestine from as early as 1856. The talk constructs a genealogy of names commissions and their inherent, zionist politics. It elaborates on the modes of resistance against these colonial politics and examines the political, cultural, and artistic effects of map transformations on Palestinian imaginations.

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Hosted by Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender. Co-sponsored by Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Department of English, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, Department of Geography, Townsend Center for the Humanities Working Group and CRG Working Group on Muslim Identities and Cultures, Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project.

Political Conflict and Gender Rights in South Asia

03.03.2016 | 5:00 – 7:00 PM | 170 Boalt Hall

Political Conflict and Gender Rights in South Asia
with Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Event Introduced by Professor Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Director, Center for Race and Gender and Professor (Emerita), Departments of Ethnic Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies

Speaker Introduced by Angana Chatterji, Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Scholar, Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

Moderated by Professor Paola Bacchetta, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley; Co-chair, Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights

Political violence is currently normalized in many sites across South Asia. Armed insurgencies, state security operations and right-wing attacks against minorities and other vulnerable populations lead to serious human rights abuses. Gender organization in South Asia impacts political conflict, producing tremendous gender violence and social constraints across gendered positionalities and identities. Depending upon the context, the gendered effects of such conflict can be especially harsh on women who are targeted in the violence. Culturally and politically marginalized, women remain particularly vulnerable to violent attacks, including sexual assault. They also very often lose their livelihood in the violence. When they function as de facto heads of households women often experience dramatically increased social exclusion, with all the despair that such exclusion entails. Many of the crimes against women that take place during periods of political conflict remain unreported. This talk speaks to all these issues. It highlights the ways in which women victimized-survivors are isolated and how they struggle to find justice and to have access to redress.

BIO
Meenakshi Ganguly is the South Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. She is the author and coordinator of numerous human rights reports produced for Human Rights Watch. She has also has written extensively on human rights related challenges across South Asia: in Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, including on the political conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, and Punjab. She has investigated a broad range of issues. Some of these are: discrimination against marginalized and minoritized groups; issues of religious freedom; peoples’ rights violations related to political and armed conflict; the precarity and violence against women and children in political conflict, including sexual abuse; bringing abusive members of state forces and combatants to justice; police reform;and human rights approaches to foreign policy. She has also worked on questions such as: immigrant and labor rights; discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS; the rights of men who have sex with men; and various LGBTIQ+ communities. Before joining Human Rights Watch in 2004, Ganguly served as the South Asia Correspondent for Time Magazine, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. At present she also serves as a member of the Working Group of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project based at the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Hosted by Project on Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender. Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures, University of California, Berkeley; Center for South Asia, Stanford University; Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley; International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley; International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University; The Human Rights Program, University of California, Berkeley; Townsend Center for the Humanities Working Group and CRG Working Group on Muslim Identities and Cultures, University of California, Berkeley; WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University.

PCRes Collaborative Network: People & Partners

RESEARCH ASSOCIATES & INTERNS

PCRes is generously assisted by:

Researchers, Student Interns and Externs from UC Berkeley, Stanford University, South Asia, and elsewhere
Research Associate: Pei Wu, Independent Scholar

PARTNERS

Academic Institutions:

Stanford University Libraries
Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Stanford University
Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research, Columbia University (Between 2013 – 2017)
Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University (Between 2013 – 2017)
International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley (Between 2013 – 2015)
International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, Stanford University Law School (Between 2012-2014)

International and Diaspora Civil Society Organizations:

Rafto Foundation for Human Rights
Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, Philippines
Asian Legal Resource Center, Hong Kong (holding general consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, United Nations) (Between 2012 – 2015)
Indian American Muslim Council (Between 2012 – 2015)

South Asia Civil Society Organizations:

Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, Jammu & Kashmir
Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai
Khalra Mission Organization, Punjab (Between 2013-2015)
Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network (Between 2012-2013)
Prashant: Center for Human Rights, Justice, and Peace, Gujarat (Between 2013-2015)

INITIATORY ADVISORY GROUP (2012-2017)

Roxanna Altholz, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law & Associate Director, International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Betsy Apple, Advocacy Director, Open Society Justice Initiative, New York
Rajvinder Singh Bains, Counsel, Punjab High Court and Haryana High Court
Patrick Ball, Executive Director, Human Rights Data Analysis Group, San Francisco
Elazar Barkan, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Director of SIPA’s Human Rights Concentration & Director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University
Homi K. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English & Director of the Humanities Center, Harvard University
Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, School of Public Health & Director of Research, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
Akeel Bilgrami, Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy and Professor, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
Wendy Brown, Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Shashi Buluswar, Development and Human Rights Specialist and Founding Co-chair, Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights Project, Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, from 2012-2015
Urvashi Butalia, Author, Co-founder of Kali for Women, and Director of Zubaan, Delhi
Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature & Co-director of the Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley
Richard M. Buxbaum, Jackson H. Ralston Professor Emeritus of International Law, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Andrik Cardenas, Former Associate Director, Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Partha Chatterjee, Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University
Charlie Clements, Faculty, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Former Executive Director (2009-2015), Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Kennedy School, Harvard University
David Cohen, Director, WSD Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford Global Studies, Stanford University, & Visiting Professor in the Graduate School, University of California, Berkeley; and Professor, William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai`i
Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Malathi de Alwis, Visiting Professor, Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo
Mihir Desai, Senior Counsel, Mumbai High Court and Supreme Court of India
Laurel E. Fletcher, Clinical Professor of Law & Director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Bijo Francis, Executive Director, Asia Legal Resource Center, Hong Kong
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director, Human Rights Watch
Pamela M. Graham, Director, Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research and Director of Global Studies, Lehman Social Sciences Library, Columbia University
Sam Gregory, Program Director, WITNESS, New York
Inderpal Grewal, Professor, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Yale University
Thomas Bolm Hansen, Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor in South Asian Studies, Professor in Anthropology, and Director of Center for South Asia, Stanford University
Parvez Imroz, Counsel, Jammu & Kashmir High Court and President, Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Srinagar
Abdul R. JanMohamed, Professor, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley
Isfundiar Kasuri, Program Director, Justice Project Pakistan
Mallika Kaur, Human Rights and Gender Specialist and Director of Programs, Armed Conflict Resolution and People’s Rights Project, Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, from 2012-2015
Amitava Kumar, Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English, Vassar College
Vinay Lal, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles
Harsh Mander, Director, Center for Equity Studies, Delhi
Jaykumar Menon, Legal Expert and Professor of Practice, McGill University
Ritu Menon, Writer, Co-founder of Kali for Women, and Publisher of Women Unlimited, Delhi
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education & Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, Syracuse University
Binalakshmi Nepram, Founder, Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, Delhi and Manipur
Khurram Parvez, Program Coordinator, Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, Srinagar
Sudhir Pattnaik, Civil Society Leader and Editor of Samadrusti, a human rights news magazine, Bhubaneswar
C. Ryan Perkins, South Asian Studies Librarian, Stanford University
Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology, Simmons College
Paul Rabinow, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
Laura Ring, Cataloger and Southern Asia Librarian, University of Chicago
Kathy Roberts, Legal Director, Center for Justice and Accountability
Naomi Roht-Arriaza, Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law
Richard Rudd, Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, Berkeley
Jeremy Sarkin, Professor of Law, University of South Africa and Distinguished Visiting Professor, Nova University Law School, Lisbon, Portugal & Former Chairperson of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances
Stefan Schmitt, Director, International Forensic Program, Physicians for Human Rights
Kim Thuy Seelinger, Director, Sexual Violence Program, Human Rights Center, School of Law, University of California, Berkeley
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Artist, Curator, Raqs Media Collective, New Delhi
Teesta Setalvad, Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai
Dina Siddiqi, Professor, Anthropology Collective and Economics and Social Sciences Department, BRAC University, Dhaka
Nora Silver, Faculty Director, Center for Social Sector Leadership, Haas School of Business, University of California, BerkeleyKhatharya Um, Associate Professor and Coordinator, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, Chair, Peace and Conflict Studies & Faculty Academic Director, Berkeley Study Abroad, University of California, Berkeley

Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative