Episode 210:A Plan For Basic Human Rights
The United Nations is an international organization, but can it be used as a tool on the path to human and civil rights here for Black people in America? To explain if this is possible, L. Joy brings UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent member, Professor Justin Hansford to the front of the class. As a bonus, they discuss Critical Race Theory, answering questions many of us have.
Homework:
Get to know esteemed Professor Derrick Bell who helped develop critical race theory https://hls.harvard.edu/today/derrick-bell-1930-2011/
Find out more about some of the work of the United Nations:
Permanent Forum on People of African Descent https://www.ohchr.org/en/permanent-forum-people-african-descent
The International Decade for People of African Descent 2015-2024 https://www.un.org/en/observances/decade-people-african-descent
Department of Economic and Social Affairs 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) https://sdgs.un.org/goals
Read: Ferguson to Geneva: Using the Human Rights Framework to Push Forward a Vision for Racial Justice in the United States after Ferguson, co-authored by Justin Hansford https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2598743
Our Guest:
Justin Hansford is a Howard University School of Law professor and member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. Hansford is a leading scholar and activist in the fields of racial justice, human rights, critical race theory, law and social movements. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University School of Law.
In the wake of the 2015 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Hansford worked to empower the Ferguson community through community-based legal advocacy. In 2015, Hansford co-authored the report, Ferguson to Geneva: Using the Human Rights Framework to Push Forward a Vision for Racial Justice in the United States after Ferguson, and accompanied the Ferguson protesters and Mike Brown’s family to Geneva, Switzerland to testify at the United Nations. He has served as a policy advisor for proposed post-Ferguson reforms at the local, state and federal level, testifying before the Ferguson Commission, the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Hansford has a B.A. from Howard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a founder of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives. Hansford also has received a Fulbright Scholar award to study the legal career of Nelson Mandela. He was previously a Democracy Project Fellow at Harvard University, a visiting professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, and an associate professor of Law at Saint Louis University. Hansford is also a co-author of the Seventh Edition of “Race, Racism and American Law,” the long celebrated legal textbook that was the first casebook published specifically for teaching race-related law courses.
