{"id":294,"date":"2009-10-25T13:07:13","date_gmt":"2009-10-25T20:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harvardnsj.com\/?p=294"},"modified":"2014-11-14T14:33:49","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T19:33:49","slug":"harvard-kennedy-school-panel-discusses-bridging-the-gap-between-human-rights-and-national-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/2009\/10\/harvard-kennedy-school-panel-discusses-bridging-the-gap-between-human-rights-and-national-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard Kennedy School Panel Discusses Bridging the Gap Between Human Rights and National Security"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_295\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-295\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><strong><strong><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-295  \" title=\"(Courtesy of The Harvard Gazette)\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2009\/10\/powersewall-pic-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200\" alt=\"Carr Center Director Rory Stewart (left), the center's founding Executive Director Samantha Power, and its former director Sarah Sewall revisit the Center's first decade.\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/strong><\/strong><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-295\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Carr Center Director Rory Stewart (left), the center&#39;s founding Executive Director Samantha Power (center), and its former director Sarah Sewall (right) revisit the Center&#39;s first decade.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>By Peter Dickos,<\/strong> HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer<strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The interests of national security and human rights often seem in opposition to each other.\u00a0 If that is the rule, then it is one that Sarah Sewall, former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard\u2019s John F. Kennedy School of Government, breaks every day.\u00a0 Sewall, also a former Pentagon official who helped craft the Army\/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual<em>, <\/em>discussed how human rights and national security must go hand in hand in the panel discussion \u201cWhy Human Rights Matter:\u00a0 Human Rights as Public Service\u201d on Wednesday, October 21.<\/p>\n<p>The panel convened to celebrate the 10<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of the Carr Center and to reflect on the changing landscape of human rights in the last 10 years.\u00a0 Sewall, who led the Carr Center from 2005-2009 and currently directs the Program on National Security and Human Rights at the Kennedy School, was joined on stage by current Carr Center Director Rory Stewart and founding Executive Director Samantha Power.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Sewall explained that when she first came to the Carr Center in 2000, she \u201cwas not a human rights person. . . .\u00a0 I was a national security person.\u00a0\u00a0 I never conceived of myself as wearing a human rights hat, but in all of the work I had done . . . I was principally concerned with questions with a very concrete human impact.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a way, Sewall\u2019s job is to convince national security policymakers and the military to think of human rights in the same way.\u00a0 Stewart noted it was a risky move for her to sit down with the US military and confront it head on regarding its \u201crules of war,\u201d and, through the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, to urge it to think of its soldiers \u201cas more than just fighting machines.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lest her talk seem too theoretical, Sewall gave concrete examples of how human rights and national security meet in everyday operations:\u00a0 in providing ethics training for Special Forces before they are deployed, and in debriefing General McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, that minimizing civilian deaths is a \u201cwin-win\u201d because it is both in the military\u2019s practical interests and \u201cthe right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sewall concluded by noting that her work at the Kennedy school has allowed her students to take this more \u201cecumenical\u201d understanding of human rights and apply it \u201cfrom the schoolhouse to the field.\u201d\u00a0 She ended optimistically, stating that when national security practitioners are \u201cinfused with a different sensibility, the possibilities for change expand enormously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sewall is also a member of both the U.S. Department of Defense\u2019s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee and the Center for Naval Analyses Defense Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Peter Dickos, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer The interests of national security and human rights often seem in opposition to each other.\u00a0 If that is the rule, then it is one that Sarah Sewall, former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard\u2019s John F. Kennedy School of Government, breaks every day.\u00a0 Sewall, also a former Pentagon official who helped craft the Army\/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, discussed how human rights and national security must go hand in hand in the panel discussion \u201cWhy Human Rights Matter:\u00a0 Human Rights as Public Service\u201d on Wednesday, October 21. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZtUX-4K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}