Human Rights: Live Panel Discussion with International Experts and Audience Q&A

Speakers for this event

• Benjamin Davis

  Benjamin Davis

  Benjamin Davis is a retired professor of law at the University of Toledo College of Law. He graduated from Harvard College (B.A. cum laude 1977), Harvard Business School, and Harvard Law School (JD-MBA 1983). He worked for three years as a development consultant in West Africa and a management consultant with Mars and Co in Paris, France. He was the American Counsel at the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce for ten years where he managed arbitrations with parties from around the world, led the computerization of the case management system, and developed fast-track arbitration. He rose to Director, Conference Programmes and Manager of the Institute of World Business Law of the International Chamber of Commerce before entering teaching in 2000 at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He is the creator and one of the organizers of the International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution. Ben is an expert with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. He has drafted shadow reports to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the UN Committee Against Torture. He was the Assistant Reporter, American Bar Associate Task Force on Electronic Commerce and Alternative Dispute Resolution. He was the Co-chair of the Teaching International Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. He led the drive for a resolution on international law at the ASIL Centennial meeting on March 30, 2006. He is a former Chair of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and a former member of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He has published widely and spoken around the world on topics related to international commercial arbitration, online dispute resolution, contracts, and public international law. He teaches Contracts, Public International Law, International and Domestic Arbitration, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and International Business Transactions.

  URL https://www.utoledo.edu/law/faculty/fulltime/BDavis.html

• Caroline Light

  Caroline Light

  Caroline Light is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Harvard’s Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her current research explores U.S. “gun culture” and socio-legal architectures of self-defense through the lens of race, gender, sexuality and class. Light’s first book, That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South (NYU Press, 2014) illuminates the experience of southern Jewish assimilation through the lens of benevolent outreach to reveal how gendered and racialized performances of elite, white cultural capital served as a critical mode of survival for a racially liminal community of southerners. Her recent book, Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense (Beacon Press, 2017) provides a critical genealogy of our nation’s ideals of armed citizenship. Beginning with the centuries-old adage “a man’s home is his castle,” she tracks the history of our nation’s relationship to lethal self-defense, from the duty to retreat to the “shoot first, ask questions later” ethos that prevails in many jurisdictions today. Ultimately, she contends that the contemporary appeal to “stand your ground” masks its exclusionary commitment to security for the few at the expense of the multitude.

  URL https://wgs.fas.harvard.edu/people/caroline-light

• Dr. Clyde Landford (Lanny) Smith

  Dr. Clyde Landford (Lanny) Smith

  Clyde Lanford (Lanny) Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H, is the founding president of Doctors for Global Health, DGH, www.dghonline.org and is Global Community Health Advisor of Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center of Brigham and Women's Hospital in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Departments of Medicine and Family & Social Medicine. After 12 years as a practicing community health physician in the South Bronx, he now lives in Jamaica Plain, MA, and continues as a clinician-educator in primary care. For six and a half years (1992-8), Lanny served as the volunteer Coordinator of the Salvadoran Mission of "Médecins du Monde-France" (Physicians of the World-France) in Morazán, El Salvador (a program using "health as reconciliation" and "building health where the peace is new"). From that experience, he pioneered the concept of Liberation Medicine (the conscious, conscientious use of health to promote social justice and human dignity).

• Javier Vasquez, LL.B.,LL.M.

  Javier Vasquez, LL.B.,LL.M.

  Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health Law, Washington College of Law (American University), Washington D.C. Javier Vasquez is a lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in public health, human rights, disability, and health-related law. Currently, he is the Senior Advisor of the United Nations Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility and supports UN Special Envoy on international human rights issues in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As Vice-President of Health Programs at Special Olympics International (2016-2019), Mr. Vasquez led all annual planning efforts to strengthen health systems at national, regional, and global levels to achieve targets related to access to health care services by persons with intellectual disabilities. He was the Human Rights Advisor/Specialist (2000-2016) for the World Health Organization (WHO), Regional Office for the Americas known as Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) where he advised Governments in collaboration with PAHO/WHO country offices on strategies to improve access to health systems and the right to the highest attainable standard of health and other related human rights of groups in situation of vulnerability. In PAHO/WHO, he also facilitated the formulation/review of national public health laws, policies, practices; and the reform of public health services in a manner consistent with international human rights treaties that protect the right to health. Prior to his work at Special Olympics International and PAHO/WHO, Mr. Vasquez was a staff attorney and recipient of the “Romulo Gallegos Fellowship”, for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights at Organization of American States (Washington D.C. May 1997-May 1998) where he prepared draft reports on the human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons with disabilities. Mr. Vasquez holds a Master’s Degree in International Law from the Washington College of Law, The American University, Washington, D.C. (1996) which focused on International Human Rights Law, public health, critical issues pertaining to the right to health, and other related human rights of groups in situation of vulnerability and ethnic/gender equality.

  URL https://www.wcl.american.edu/community/faculty/profile/vasquez/bio

• Robert Sattin

  Robert Sattin

  Robert Sattin, President of The Appleton Group, Lawyer - After over 33 years in the private practice of law in Hartford, CT, Bob came to St. Petersburg where he spent 8 years as the president of The Appleton Group, which developed and ran a network of over 270 law and accounting firms located in 100 countries. In that position, Bob not only interacted with member firms around the world, but also led semi-annual conferences in Europe, N. America, S. America and Asia.