Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the January newsletter, please send you submission by January 15, 2017.
A group of "engineers, designers, business executives, and others" created and signed a pledge vowing not to create a database of individuals based on their religious beliefs. In doing so, the writers of the pledge acknowledge the role of technology in human rights abuses throughout history and vow to identify and advocate against the targeting of marginalized communities such as Muslims and immigrants.
The full pledge can be found at http://neveragain.tech/
January 27, 2016 6:00-8:00p.m. The Burke Library Reading Room (3rd Floor)
Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway
Panelists: Larry Cox, Co-Director, Kairos: The Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice and former Executive Director, Amnesty International USA; Gail Hovey, Former member of the Southern Africa Committee, American Committee on Africa; Rev. William Wipfler, Former Director of the Latin American Department of the National Council of Churches
Moderator: Carolyn...
The Philip M. Hamer and Elizabeth Hamer Kegan Award Subcommittee of the Society of American Archivists seeks nominations (including self-nominations) for the 2017 award.
This award recognizes an archivist, editor, group of individuals, or institution that has increased public awareness of a specific body of documents through compilation, transcription, exhibition, or public presentation of archives or manuscript materials for educational, instructional, or other public purpose. Archives...
Operation Condor, the trans-border, multinational effort by Southern Cone secret police services to track down and “liquidate” opponents of their regimes in the 1970s, targeted officials of Amnesty International as well as other human rights groups, and planned overseas missions in Paris and London, according to a comprehensive CIA report on Condor operations just released by the Obama administration. “The basic mission of Condor teams to be sent overseas,” according to the CIA, was...
The Archives Association of Ontario (AAO) is pleased to share the first of two pages aimed at supporting the Truth and Reconciliation process and improving access to Indigenous focused archival and cultural resources. Toward Truth and Reconciliation (http://aao-archivists.ca/truth-and-reconciliation) is a dedicated page aimed at assisting Ontario's archival community to navigate the path toward the decolonisation and Indigenization of our practice. The page consists of free and openly...
On January 15, a group of archivists released a letter to members of our profession regarding the Trump administration and potential abuses of information technology. They call themselves the Concerned Archivists and their statement reads in part:
President-elect Donald Trump has made a long series of statements and proposed policies at odds with our Constitution, our history, our system of law, and our international human rights obligations, and which are a direct affront and threat to...
The US Holocaust Museum, located in Washington, D.C., has issued a statement yesterday clearly defining the Holocaust so as to curtail any further confusion following President Trump’s vague remarks—which did not mention Jews or Nazi anti-semitism—on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators … Nazi ideology cast the world as a racial struggle, and the singular focus on the...
It is amazing what you can discover in the archives – sometimes a piece of history itself! In 2014, History Associates archivist Valerie Vanden Bossche was working to organize and preserve the archives of the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. The Council House was the first headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), founded by Bethune and led by Civil Rights icon Dorothy I. Height. In this house, the NCNW spearheaded strategies...
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine invites you to join our annual international reading campaign, One Book, Many Communities held in April 2017, in concurrence with National Reading Week in Palestine. This year’s reading is “Returning to Haifa” by Ghassan Kanafani, a novella that can be found in the collection Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories.
This project draws inspiration from the “one book, one town" idea, wherein people in local communities come...
Chapter 1: How Khmer Rouge Came to Power
With the support of the European Union and Rei Foundation Limited, Bophana Center is currently developing a smart-device application for learning Khmer Rouge history. In line with this project, Bophana Center launches a series of thematic panel discussions about Khmer Rouge history and its education with special guests.
The first edition will be dedicated to the theme of "How the Khmer Rouge came to power" which constitutes the first chapter of...
The human rights archives blog is making a comeback and we need your contributions! Is there an issue that really irks you and you have something to say? Is there something in the news that can benefit from an archival perspective? Did you work on an incredible project related to archives and human rights and you want to share you insights?
Send blog post pitches to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. Include a short summary of your idea and why you're the best person to write it. Publication...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see. I did not get any newsletter submissions last month (shocking, I know) but you can remedy that!
Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and...
In 2016 the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Global Leadership Academy of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) convened two six-day dialogues with “memory workers” from nine countries. This was the second series of international Mandela Dialogues, the first having taken place in 2013-2014. Informing the first series had been a discomfort with what was seen as a growing orthodoxy around “transitional justice”. The discomfort gave rise to a range of questions aimed...
On January 11, 2017, Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Marco Rubio (Florida) introduced S.103–115th Congress, the “Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act of 2017.” The language is blunt: “no Federal funds may be used to design, build, maintain, utilize, or provide access to a Federal database of geospatial information on community racial disparities or disparities in access to affordable housing.” A similar billwas also proposed in the House of Representatives.
Read more here.
We are very excited to talk with Jarrett Drake, digital archivist at Princeton University’s Mudd Manuscript Library. He was awarded an Innovation Award from the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) in 2016 for his work in challenging and re-examining the practices of archiving and documenting history, particularly relating to preserving the under-represented voices in history. Follow his writings here.
Read the interview here.
Washington, D.C. February 7, 2017 – CIA covert aid to Italy continued well after the agency’s involvement in the 1948 elections – into the early 1960s – averaging around $5 million a year, according to a draft Defense Department historical study published today for the first time by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University.
Read more here.
Join us from 1 pm to 4:30 pm on Monday, March 13, 2017 to celebrate Sunshine Week and learn more about open government! Leading experts, advocates and technologists will join the National Archives’ Office of Government Information Services for this special afternoon program. The event is free and open to the public but registration is recommended.
See the schedule of events here and register here.
The human rights archives blog is making a comeback and we need your contributions! Is there an issue that really irks you and you have something to say? Is there something in the news that can benefit from an archival perspective? Did you work on an incredible project related to archives and human rights and you want to share you insights?Send blog post pitches to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. Include a short summary of your idea and why you're the best person to write it. Publication experience...
Something important to you missing from this newsletter? Send a submission my way and let me know what you would like to see.Please submit newsletter items about archives and human rights (writ broadly) to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. These can be recent publications, upcoming events or exhibitions, opportunities and scholarships, or something else entirely as long as it connects to archives and human rights. For the March newsletter, please send you submission March 23, 2017.
By now you've probably heard about the potentially devastating cuts proposed for Institute of Museum and Library Services. Below are some resources to make your voice heard and hopefully block or at least reduce this disastrous proposal.
This tool from the Every Library Action Center allows you to easily look up the contact information for your representatives, and also provides a call script. You can also email your representatives via Every Library or the American Library Association. Use...
On Thursday, March 16, 2017, President Trump sent an outline of his proposed FY 2018 budget to Congress, to be followed by a more detailed proposal in the spring. The budget, known as “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” proposes a $54 billion increase in defense and public safety spending that is offset by equivalent cuts in discretionary non-defense programs. Included in those cuts are reductions in, or the total elimination of, funding for federal agencies with a...
In our very first post for the relaunched Human Rights Archives Section blog, I had the pleasure of interviewing Katharina Hering and Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook of the Concerned Archivists Alliance. They opened up about why they started the Alliance, and what they see as the role of information workers and professional organizations under this administration.
If you would be interested in writing for the HRA blog, send blog post pitches to hilary.h.barlow@gmail.com. Include a short summary of your...
Three out of five of all federal agencies are flouting the new law that improved the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and required them to update their FOIA regulations, according to the new National Security Archive FOIA Audit released today to celebrate Sunshine Week.
The National Security Archive Audit found that only 38 out of 99 federal agencies have updated their FOIA regulations in compliance with the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 that was passed with bipartisan, bicameral support. The...
This community conversation will give visitors the opportunity to learn about the current issues surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and the tribes of Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.The conversation will be led by Albert Ortiz, Chairman of the American Indian Movement of Indiana and Kentucky and a member of the Kiowa and Yaqui tribes; Dr. Nicole Grant, PhD, Professor of Sociology at Northern Kentucky University and an expert on Indigenous issues; Dr. Joan Ferrante, PhD,...
