Sat Mar 20, 2010

SAJAforum: PAKISTAN: An Update on Internally Displaced Persons

Back in July 2009, we took note of what experts then were calling an “impending humanitarian disaster“: the displacement of as many as 2.5 million individuals due to the government’s military offensive in the North-West Frontier Province. Soon thereafter, the Pakistan government announced plans to return displaced individuals to their homes, and mainstream news coverage of the crisis subsided and public attention turned elsewhere.

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Sun Mar 14, 2010

DREXEL EVENT: Nisha Agarwal, “Luchando, Creando Poder Popular: A Community-Based Perspective to Fighting Health Disparities,” Wed Mar 31 @ 4:15pm

Nisha Agarwal, Director, Health Justice Program, New York Lawyers for the Public InterestCome hear Nisha Agarwal, Director of the Health Justice Program at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, discuss NYLPI’s use of law and organizing to address issues of racial and ethnic health disparities in New York City. Her talk will focus on two innovative campaigns: (1) improving access to pharmacies for limited English proficient individuals and (2) eliminating race and class segregation in academic medical centers. She will describe how these campaigns have evolved from community education and organizing to legal action to legislative victories and how law students can get involved in these projects and others.

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Tue Jan 5, 2010

DREXEL EVENT: Shylashri Shankar, Judging Anti-Terror Cases: Evidence From India, Mon Jan 11 @ 4:30pm

Scaling JusticeThe Indian Supreme Court is widely recognized as a complex and dynamic institution. It has been the subject of much acclaim, as well as criticism. The Court has even been charged with overreaching itself and intruding into the domains of the executive and the legislature. In an era of globalization and judicial activism, the experience of India, offers a valuable perspective on the role judges play in a vibrant democracy.

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Sat Jul 4, 2009

SAJAforum: PAKISTAN: An “Impending Humanitarian Disaster”

PK - CampsThat’s what Audil Rashid and Mian Nazish Adnan sound the alarm about in the July 4, 2009 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, following their recent visits to camps set up to house internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing the conflict zone in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. While Americans celebrate the Independence Day weekend with barbeques and fireworks, Rashid and Adnan paint a grim picture of the crisis in Pakistan:

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Fri Mar 13, 2009

SAJAforum: Quantifying India’s Encounter Deaths and Disappearances

Graph-encounterIn recent weeks, human rights violations in India have slowly been seeping into the mainstream Western consciousness — and not just because of Sergeant Srinivas. A flurry of media stories and human rights reports draws attention not only to particular extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and incidents involving torture at the hands of Indian police and security forces, but also to the prospect that such incidents may be part of more systematic patterns of abuse than is typically assumed.

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Mon Jan 19, 2009

SAJAforum: Five questions for South Asians for Obama

IMG_4424In 1993, the last time I was in Washington to attend a presidential inauguration, Representatives Robert Matsui and Norman Mineta cohosted the first significant Asian American reception in connection with any U.S. presidential inauguration. While some attendees had mixed feelings, since by then it had become clear that President Clinton’s initial round of cabinet nominees would not include any Asian Americans, there was nevertheless a sense that the Asian American community had marked an important political milestone.

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Tue Dec 23, 2008

SAJAforum: Muslim conference prompts gay-evangelical love, peace, harmony

Ahmad-EtheridgePresident-elect Barack Obama‘s selection of conservative fundamentalist minister Rick Warren, who supported California’s Proposition 8 in last month’s elections, to deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration has caused many of Obama’s progressive supporters to feel a sense of “betrayal,” as Neil Buchanan has written at Dorf on Law. Singer, songwriter, and Prop 8 opponent Melissa Etheridge, who is openly lesbian and has been a longtime activist for gay rights and other progressive causes, had much the same initial reaction. While she had never previously heard of Warren, she wondered whether Warren was a “hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others,” and whether she should boycott the inauguration on account of his selection.

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