The Human Right to Truth and Truth Commissions

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the landmark report, with the wealth of experience from over 35 Truth Commissions worldwide, it is imperative to evaluate the impact of this shift in the legal paradigm within transitional societies. It is crucial to assess whether this change has yielded the anticipated results and if transitional societies have witnessed positive changes in their political processes and the protection of victims’ rights. This workshop aims to undertake such an evaluation through the perspectives of an interdisciplinary panel of experts. Drawing from fields such as law, sociology, history, political science, and regional expertise in nations undergoing transitional processes involving truth commissions or analogous institutions, our goal is to address pivotal questions and chart pathways for future research that can inform ongoing or forthcoming transitional processes.

Access the conference program via the pdf link below.

Commentator.

Joshua R. Coene, Lecturer, University at Buffalo School of Law

Research Focus: Criminal Law, Prison Law, Immigration and Refugee Law, Sociology of Punishment, Political Economy, Disaster Management

Transitional justice and UN Special Procedures: current perspectives and challenges
(online presentation)

Bernard Duhaime, UN Special Rapporteur on truth, justice and reparation, and full Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM, Montreal, Canada) 

Bio: Bernard Duhaime is Full Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM, Montreal, Canada), where he specializes in international human rights and international humanitarian law. He has published extensively and presented numerous conferences worldwide.

Conference Organizer and Commentator.

Jorge Luis Fabra-Zamora, Associate Professor, University at Buffalo School of Law

Bio: Jorge Fabra-Zamora’s research and teaching interests focus on legal and political philosophy, torts, and international human rights. His current project develops a unified theory capable of different forms of state, indigenous, customary, international, transnational, supra-national, and global law. His work also explores the problems of state liability at the intersection between torts, administrative law, human rights, and political philosophy.

The Contribution of Truth Commissions to the Development and Expansion of the Right to Truth
Truth commissions have established the principle that victims and societies have a right to know the truth about past human rights violations. Prior to the widespread creation of these commissions, access to information regarding atrocities was frequently hindered by state secrecy, a lack of accountability, and political opposition. Truth commissions have contributed to crystallise the idea that revealing the truth is not merely a moral or political goal, but a responsibility of the state.

The paper discusses how and to what extent Truth Commissions have helped formalise the right to truth, expanded its legal foundations and scope and connected it to victims' rights and reparative justice. Their efforts have impacted national policies and international human rights law, making truth-seeking a vital aspect of transitions following conflict and authoritarian rule.

Anita Ferrara, Lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway, Ireland

Restorative Humanism: A Philosophical and Practical Reimagination of Transitional Justice.
This paper introduces Restorative Humanism as a distinct and expansive ethical and philosophical framework that moves beyond the confines of restorative justice. While restorative justice focuses on repairing harm and fostering reconciliation in specific legal or transitional contexts, the notion of Restorative Humanism that I propose is grounded in a deeper affirmation of human dignity, ethical relationality, and historical accountability. Rooted in postcolonial and existentialist humanist traditions, Restorative Humanism offers a normative vision that addresses structural injustice, promotes cultural revitalization, and centers the moral imperative of human flourishing. Through critical engagement with truth and reconciliation processes, Indigenous resurgence movements, and global justice initiatives, this paper argues that Restorative Humanism provides a broader philosophical and normative foundation for justice and memory work in the post-conflict and postcolonial age. It insists that positivist justice is not enough; the full affirmation of human worth requires systemic transformation, sustained moral engagement, and the cultivation of communities grounded in dignity, contrition, inclusion, and hope.

Bonny Ibhawoh,  Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights, McMaster University, Canada and Expert-Rapporteur, United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development, UN-OHCHR

Bio: Bonny Ibhawoh teaches Global Human Rights in the Department of History and the Centre for Global Peace, Justice and Health. He also teaches in the McMaster Arts & Science Program and the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. He is the founding Director of the McMaster Centre for Human Rights and Restorative Justice, and the Project Director of Participedia and the Confronting Atrocity Project. He is an Affiliate Member of the Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine, McMaster University.

Cultivating Collective Conscience: Meeting at the Crossroad of Memory, Contested Truths and Political Ethos
In this essay, the author reflects upon her theory that transitional justice work occurs in a tumultuous brew of memory contestation. This perspective challenges the idea that transitional justice mechanisms like truth commissions will naturally lead to a collective memory and a widespread societal condemnation of past human rights violations.  Instead, empirical research reveals the often-overlooked process of memory contestation and division can persist decades after the work of a truth commission, thus potentially undermining the very goal of truth commissions.  Indeed, the pluralisms of narratives surrounding truth commissions can even increase tensions and even compromise the possibility of “closing the book on the past.”  Different societal actors actively and purposefully accompany the transitional justice process seeking to use judicial and non-judicial justice mechanisms to construct public memories that fit within their own interpretations and political agendas which directly impacts the political ethos of a society.  The media with its effort to be a “neutral” player may even become a channel for this contestation and division. Social media only exacerbates this possibility. This situation presents a paradox for transitional justice advocates: On the one hand, human rights frameworks and the ideals of democracy protect tolerating free expression of different interpretations and opinions of a country’s history.  However, when versions of the past justify or explain away atrocity, they challenge the political project of building a culture of rights and the rule of law.  While there may not be one way to manage this paradox, the author argues that there should at least be awareness of its existence and an attempt to consciously address it as part of the overall transitional justice journey from conflict to peace.  The author concludes by discussing how attention to education and outreach might provide an avenue for addressing the tension of competing truths.

Lisa J. Laplante, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Law and Policy, New England Law

Bio: Lisa J. Laplante has been a practitioner, researcher, and teacher of transitional justice and human rights for twenty-five years. She began her career in human rights as a Furman Fellow with Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First) soon after earning her J.D. from New York University School of Law where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern Public Interest Scholar.  She then participated in Peru’s transitional justice process in various capacities for six years, beginning as a researcher with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) while a grantee of the Notre Dame University Transitional Justice Program.  In particular, she worked with the Reparations Unit to contribute to the TRC’s final recommendations on how victims of the internal armed conflict should be adequately repaired.  She has extensive experience in community organizing and working with affected populations seeking reparations for human rights violations, including victims of Peru’s internal armed conflict.  Lisa also co-founded the Praxis Institute for Social Justice, where she served as Deputy Director and oversaw cutting-edge, ethnographic research on themes of memory, truth and reparations funded by the United States Institute of Peace, resulting in prize-winning scholarship on a variety of themes in truth, memory and reparations that appears in top peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes and law reviews, including the Harvard International Law Journal, Virginia Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of International Law, and Cornell Journal of International Law,  Recognition of her expertise in the field led to the invitation to become a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton in 2008.  She is currently a professor of law at New England Law | Boston where she also directs the Center for International Law and Policy (CILP).  In the fall of 2020, she launched the Transitional Justice in the USA project to explore and raise awareness of TJ initiatives in the U.S. and how they relate to themes commonly associated with the international field of transitional justice.

Commentator.

Bio: Manoj Mate is a Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo School of Law, State University of New York and is an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Center for Information Integrity.  His research centers on public law, constitutional law, election law, democracy, and comparative constitutional law.

Manoj Mate, Professor, University at Buffalo School of Law

Commentator.

Tara Melish, Professor; Director of the Buffalo Human Rights Center, University at Buffalo School of Law

Bio: Tara J. Melish teaches, writes and practices in the areas of human rights and public international law. Active in advocacy and litigation initiatives before United Nations and Inter-American human rights bodies, she has worked as associate social affairs officer in the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, as United Nations representative of Disability Rights International in the drafting negotiations of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as staff attorney at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), researcher to the South African Land Claims Court and Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, and legal adviser or consultant to a range of national and international human rights organizations. A specialist in comparative approaches to the protection of socio-economic and cultural rights, she has given human rights training programs across the world.

Commentator.

David Mendeloff, Associate Professor of International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University, Canada

Bio: David Mendeloff’s research examines the theory and practice of international and transitional justice, with a particular focus on the impact of accountability mechanisms, such as international and domestic prosecutions and truth commissions, on wartime civilian violence, war termination, peace processes, post-war statebuilding, democratization, rule of law development, and human rights protections. His current research examines the International Criminal Court’s ability to act coercively to limit or prevent wars crimes and atrocities in ongoing civil wars. At NPSIA, he teaches courses in international conflict analysis, post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding, and transitional justice. Mendeloff holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a B.A. (Hons) in international relations from the Claremont Colleges (Pitzer College).

The Human Right to Truth: Lessons Learned from Latin American Experiences with Truth-Telling Revisited
The Right to Truth as a standard in international human rights law has evolved from the practice of States since the 1980s, and has been shaped by a number of judicial decisions by international courts and organs of protection.  In turn, those decisions have contributed to the application of this right in domestic jurisdictions in significant ways.  My chapter on The Human Right to Truth: Lessons Learned from Latin American Experiences with Truth-Telling (in Telling the Truths: Truth-Telling and Peace Building in Post-Conflict Societies, Tristan Anne Borer, ed., Notre Dame, Indiana: ND University Press, 2006) merits a review and reconsideration in the light of more recent examples of Transitional Justice, particularly on transitions from conflict to peace – as opposed to transitions from dictatorship to democracy.  And yet the legitimate aspiration to know the whole truth about mass atrocities remains central to the effort to rebuild after tragedies of human rights violations.  My presentation to the “The Human Right to Truth and Truth Commissions” will explore this evolution.

Juan Mendez, Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence, Washington College of Law, American University (online participation)

Bio: Juan E. Méndez is a Professor of Human Rights Law in Residence at the American University – Washington College of Law, where he is Faculty Director of the Anti-Torture Initiative, a project to WCL’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. He was the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment between November 2010 and October 31, 2016. He is the author (with Marjory Wentworth) of “Taking A Stand: The Evolution of Human Rights” (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). In early 2017 Professor Méndez was elected Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva, Switzerland. In February 2017, he was named a member of the Selection Committee to appoint magistrates of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and members of the Truth Commission set up as part of the Colombian Peace Accords. He was an advisor on crime prevention to the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court from 2009 to 2011 and Co-Chair of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association in 2010 and 2011. Until May 2009 he was the President of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). Concurrent with his duties at ICTJ, the Honorable Kofi Annan named Mr. Méndez his Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, a task he performed from 2004 to 2007.

Commentator anmd Presenter.

Rethinking the Role of Truth Commissions: Truth as Discovery, Interpretation, and Dialogue
More than forty years after the establishment of the first successful truth commission, scholars are now speaking of a new wave of research focused on evaluating the outcomes of these bodies—specifically, whether there is empirical evidence to determine if they have fulfilled the objectives for which they were created. (See: Dancy, Geoff and Thoms, Oskar Timo, “Do Truth Commissions Really Improved Democracy?” in Comparative Political Studies, 55 (4), 2022.)  This evaluation often considers their ability to trigger institutional reforms, support criminal prosecutions of those responsible for serious human rights violations, shift public attitudes toward democratic processes, and reduce conflict while fostering respect for human rights. (See among others: Brahm, Eric, “Uncovering the Truth: Examining Truth Commission Success and Impact” in International Studies Perspectives, 8, 2007; Bakiner, Onu, Truth Commission Impact: An Assessment of How Commissions Influence Politics and Society, The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 8, 2014; Kitagawa, Risa, “From Political Violence to Political Trust? How Transitional Justice Affects Citizen Views of Government” in International Studies Quarterly, 67 (1) 2023; Murphy, Matt, “How does transitional Justice matter? Expanding and refining quantitative research on the effects of transitional justice” in Journal of Human Rights, 21 (4), 2022.)

The aim of this paper is to argue that a proper evaluation of Truth Commissions requires a careful re-examination of their goals. The primary purpose of a Truth Commission is to uncover the truth about serious human rights abuses committed in the recent past. Just as a medical diagnosis should not be judged by its impact on a patient’s recovery but rather by its accuracy, the work of a Truth Commission should be assessed based on its capacity to uncover the truth.

However, the concept of “truth” within the right to truth encompasses three distinct meanings. First, truth refers to factual discovery: identifying the perpetrator of a crime or locating a missing person. This understanding is reflected in the Geneva Conventions and the legal obligations of parties to locate the missing persons following armed conflicts. Second, truth can be understood as a historical interpretation of the events that took place during periods of grave human rights violations. In this sense, truth involves not only gathering data—how many people died? what rights were violated?—but also developing hypotheses regarding the structural causes of the conflict. This interpretive notion of truth has gained traction in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human Rights. Lastly, truth is sometimes seen as a dialogical process among different sectors of society, aimed at hearing and acknowledging multiple narratives of past events. While this form of truth has no formal legal recognition, it appears in the reflective practices of various commissions on how truth should be constructed and understood. Without denying the importance of the studies conducted so far, this text suggests new ways to assess the work of truth commissions based on the previously outlined classification of truth.

Andres Molina-Ochoa, Professor of Philosophy, South Texas College

Transitional Justice, AI, and the Right to Truth.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is re-shaping the practice of transitional justice.  This chapter focuses on pioneering efforts first undertaken by Holocaust museums to harness AI technology to re-create interactive visitor experiences through AI-based holograms of victims.  As victims of atrocities die, so too do the possibilities for current generations to engage with survivors and understand their experience through dialogue with them.  AI holograms offer the potential for maintaining engagement with victims unconstrained by the limits of mortality.  Holograms are emblematic of how the practice of transitional justice is using AI technology to move beyond limits in human capacities in the quest to acknowledge and redress atrocities. There are good reasons for transitional justice to embrace the possibilities that AI technologies create. However, AI technologies also generate risks.  In this chapter I focus on three, using holograms as an illustrative example of such risks. The first is that AI exacerbates the tensions involved in balancing a victim-centered approach to transitional justice with the broader societal objectives inherent in the pursuit of transitional justice.  The second is that AI may undermine efforts to counter denial about atrocities.  The third is that AI further marginalizes the already marginalized in the context of the global digital divide.  When narratives of victims become data, then the global picture of victimization becomes a function of whose data is available and accessible.Transitional Justice, AI Holograms, and the Right to Truth

Colleen Murphy, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Roger & StephanyJoslin Professor of Law in the College of Law, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Bio: Colleen Murphy is a scholar and teacher in the areas of moral, political, and legal theory. Her research focuses specifically on political reconciliation and transitional justice in response to entrenched injustice, and on the legal and ethical dimensions of risks. She is the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the 2017 North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award and the Wayne R. LaFave Award for Excellence in Faculty Scholarship from the University of Illinois College of Law. She is also the author of A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Dr. Murphy is the co-editor of several interdisciplinary edited volumes, including Technology and Equality (Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming 2024), Climate Change and its Impacts: Risks and Inequalities (Springer 2018), Risk Analysis of Natural Hazards (Springer 2015) and Engineering Ethics for a Globalized World (Springer 2015). She has authored or co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, law review articles, and anthologized book chapters in prominent venues including the American Journal of Political Science, Law and Philosophy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Risk Analysis, and the University of Illinois Law Review.

Commentator.

Athena Mutua, Professor; Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, University at Buffalo School of Law

Research Focus: Business Associations, Civil Rights Law, Constitutional Law, Critical Race and Feminist Legal Theory, Law and Political Economy

Bio: Athena Mutua writes in the areas of critical race and feminist legal theory. Her work includes the edited collection Progressive Black Masculinities (Routledge, 2006) and articles titled “Restoring Justice to Civil Rights Movement Activists: New Historiography and the ‘Long Civil Rights Era’ ” (2008); “The Rise, Development, and Future Directions of Critical Race Theory” (Denver University Law Review, 2006); and “Gender Equality and Women’s Solidarity Across Religious, Ethnic, and Class Difference in the Kenya Constitutional Review Process” in the William and Mary Journal of Women and Law (2006). The latter article involved activism and research for which she received the University of Buffalo Exceptional Scholars Young Investigator’s Award. Her article “Introducing ClassCrits: From Class Blindness to a Critical Legal Analysis of Economic Inequality” (Buffalo Law Review, 2008) explores issues of race and gender as they relate to class structures and introduces the concepts and boundaries of ClassCrits, a project she helped found.

Procedurally sound truth(s): The convergence of trials and truth commissions in limiting truth seeking
The truth(s) produced by trials and truth commissions (TC) alike are much more similar than what is commonly thought. A closer look at the resulting ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ emerging from both collapses assumptions that trials deliver justice and TC deliver truth, and interrogates the validity of the conceptual and teleological dichotomies framing the mainstream understanding of such mechanisms as radically distinct ways to deliver substantive truth(s). This paper argues that the procedural constraints of TCs make their ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ vulnerable to all the critiques levied at the narrowness and partiality of ‘legal truths’ occurring from trials.

By adopting some of the theories and methods of comparative law to better understand trials and TCs as truth-seeking mechanisms in transitional contexts, this paper considers how ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ of both tend to converge. The analysis will draw on theoretical reflections as well as examples from existing empirical studies in the transitional justice (TJ) literature. In accepting that TCs remain useful mechanisms for truth seeking in transitions from conflict and authoritarianism, I suggest that greater attention be given to the fact that ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ of TCs are by design the direct result of procedural parameters and constraints – much like ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ of trials. Given that truth seeking is funnelled through underpinning normative principles and procedural rules in both TCs and trials, the lens of comparative legal analysis helps reveal a similar set of limitations of the truths uncovered by both mechanisms.

Building on this, the paper posits that the key distinction in understanding the limits of procedural truths produced by trials and TCs is the degree to which underpinning normative principles and procedural rules are fixed in time and predetermined, or malleable and contextualised in transition. While trials are usually based on established (ex ante) procedures which channel the parameters of any truths uncovered through that mechanism, TCs are generally unique and ad hoc mechanisms developed ex novo to respond to specific challenges, and truth-seeking through TCs closely reflects that ‘constitutional’ moment. This ad hoc creation allows TCs to be more flexible in their procedural ‘programming’, but it is inevitable that any resulting ‘truth outputs’ and ‘truth outcomes’ are narrowed and funnelled accordingly. As such, much like trial-based truth seeking, TC truth seeking can only go as far, as back in time, as deep and as wide as its procedures permits, resulting in truths that are limited by the vision and compromises of its design and aims. For these reasons, any celebration of TCs as the mechanism par excellence for transitional truth seeking should be tempered by the realisation that any emerging truths are inevitably channelled and restricted by their underpinning normative principles and procedural rules –reflecting some of the core critiques levied at truth seeking through trials.   

Alice Panepinto, Reader, School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, Ireland

Bio: Alice Panepinto is an international and comparative lawyer focusing on human rights and humanitarian law, and has a regional specialism in the Middle East and particularly Palestine. Her work also explores land and property law issues linked to her core research themes. Her teaching reflects both her research interests and applied work outside academia.

Alice's monograph, Truth and Transitional Justice: Localising the International Legal Framework in Muslim Majority Legal Systems (Hart, 2022), investigates synergies between international law and Islamic law in furthering truth-seeking, the formation of collective memories and the victims’ right to know the truth, as key aims of the international paradigm of transitional justice and broadly supported by the shari’ah.

The Transformation of Accountability: New Accountability Mechanisms and Implications for Transitional Justice
The Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the "Special Sanctions" provision of the 2016 Final Accord between the government of Colombia and the FARC-EP rebel group is an example of a broader, and welcome, effort to rethink the role of accountability mechanisms in transitional justice. This talk focuses primarily on three aspects of this transformation that may prove to have deeper consequences for future transitional justice approaches. First, expanding and deepening how we understand accountability beyond criminal prosecution implies a fundamental reconsideration of how accountability mechanisms as a "pillar" of transitional justice interact with other pillars such as reparations, truth commissions, and institutional reform. Second, a revised and expanded conception of what constitutes accountability also will entail a changed relationship between national authorities pursuing transitional justice and international legal bodies, such as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, charged with oversight that national processes conform with a state's international legal obligations. Finally, a transformed and widened conception of accountability may help move definitively beyond the "truth vs justice" debates of transitional justice's early decades, and move toward the goal of accountability as a positive prevention measure contributing to guarantees of non-recurrence.

Maxim A. Pensky, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University

Research Interests: Social and political philosophy; continental philosophy; philosophy of law and international relations

The justice archive: transitional justice and digital memory (coauthored with Iavor Rangelov)
This article introduces the justice archive as a concept and set of practices emerging from recent developments in transitional justice, memory, and digital technology. Drawing on evidence from the Americas and the Balkans, it examines digital archiving and memory activism and considers the role of international law and regulation.

Ruti Teitel, Ernst C Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law; Co-Director Center for International Law, and Director, Institute for Global Law, Justice and Policy, New York Law School

Bio: Ruti Teitel, an internationally recognized authority on international law, international human rights, transitional justice, and comparative constitutional law, is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School, Co-Director of the Center for International Law, and Director of the Institute for Global Law, Justice, and Policy. She was a Straus Fellow at New York University Law School’s Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice (2012–13).

Her path-breaking book, Transitional Justice, examines the twentieth century transitions to democracy in many countries. Born in Argentina, Professor Teitel’s interest in the topic grew out of the dilemmas confronting that society in the transition out of junta rule. The book explores the recurring question of how new regimes should respond to past repression, contending that the law can play a profound role in periods of radical change in advancing a new sense of legitimacy.

New Insights on Gender and Truth Commissions
Research on gender and truth commissions tends to be either conceptual or case studies of women and LGBTQI+ engagement with truth commissions in particular countries. I draw upon empirical research from Latin America to explore several gendered dimensions of truth commissions. In doing so, I draw primarily from the "Beyond Words" project (Skaar et al. 2022), which examined nearly 1000 recommendations issued by 13 truth commissions in the region. First, I will explore variation in the gender makeup of these commissions. Next, I will examine the extent to which truth commission recommendations engage with gender, and then highlight the extent to which implementation of these recommendations differs from others. Finally, I will provide a brief overview of how Colombia's recent truth commission substantially innovated along these lines.

Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, Professor in the School of Public Affairs, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Bio: Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm's work focuses on International Relations and Comparative Politics, with a focus on Human Rights, Transitional Justice, and Peace & Conflict Studies. His book, “Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies,” was published by Routledge (2010). He also is the author of several book chapters and his articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Peace Research, International Journal of Transitional Justice, Journal of Human Rights, and International Studies Perspectives.

Commentator.

Seval Yildrim, Professor, UB Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence; Chief Diversity Officer

Bio: Seval Yildirim is a Professor of Law, and UB’s Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence and Chief Diversity Officer.  A scholar of law and religion, Professor Yildirim also has extensive administrative experience in higher education, including in areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion, faculty and student recruitment and retention, promoting inclusive pedagogy and classrooms, community outreach and fundraising.

Yildirim’s research and expertise center on issues related to human dignity, secularism in comparative contexts, Muslim identity and the law, populism and free speech.  Her current research explores patterns and formations of populism in comparative contexts, as well as the diminishing scope of free speech protections in the United States.  Her scholarship has been published in various journals and edited volumes, including the American Journal of Comparative Law, Pepperdine Law Review and Minnesota Journal of International Law.

Commentator.

Beatrice Canossi, Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Galway

Commentator.

Min Cho, PhD Student, University at Buffalo Political Science

Commentator.

Carlos Federico Gaitan, SJD Candidate, American University, Washington College of Law

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