How can photography impact the struggle for human rights around the globe?

Eric Stover and Alexa Koenig interviewed on KALW-FM, Your Call, August 25, 2014

Stover: “The featured photographs remind us that human rights photography is at its best when it shuns the sensational and sentimental, and instead finds human dignity in the face of injustice.”

Koenig: “In a world where we are so saturated often with media images, it’s important to focus on the positive, the possibility for survival, the possibility for making sense out of something that often comes across as quite senseless.”

Researcher’s mission to show Nazis’ silencing of music during Holocaust

Carla Shapreau cited in Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2014

A violin maker, attorney and lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Law, Shapreau is on a research mission to bring Nazi persecution of Jewish musicians to light. She looks for valuable musical instruments and collections of sheet music that the Nazis confiscated, and anything else that will add to the world’s store of knowledge about how Jewish musicians were hounded into emigration, silence or death.

Human rights made strikingly visible at Berkeley show

Alexa Koenig and Eric Stover quoted in Berkeleyside, August 22, 2014

“We have an amazing opportunity to be affiliated with the campus, but we function as an independent NGO of sorts,” Koenig says. “We’re very boots on the ground, yet when we’re facing an issue we need to address we benefit from the expertise available at Cal.”

Eric Stover serves as faculty director…. “We tend to be so focused on the work and service we’re not thinking about outreach. The 20th anniversary celebration is our chance to acknowledge that there have been dozens of students and faculty involved with our work.”

Is China turning the corner on environmental protection?

Rachel Stern quoted in Earth Island Journal, August 21, 2014

“Historically, China has been struggling with problems of development, and economic development has been the biggest priority at every level of the state,” underscores Stern. “So I think in this turn towards environmental protection, the goal is not necessarily to be the greenest country on earth, but what they talk about in China is finding a new balancing point between environmental protection and economic growth.”

Atty. Gen. Harris seeks to overturn ban on California executions

Elisabeth Semel quoted in Los Angeles Times, August 21, 2014

Elisabeth Semel … said it was impossible to predict what the 9th Circuit might do. She said the Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issues raised by Carney. “The court has rejected delay as a viable 8th Amendment challenge in some cases, yes, but it hasn’t done so definitively.”

Obama team more likely than predecessors to prosecute police

john a. powell quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, August 21, 2014

“There’s reason to be concerned about how fair of a trial you could get in Missouri,” powell said, citing McCulloch’s pro-police statements during the protests. A federal trial, he said, would draw jurors from a larger and more racially diverse area and would help to “restore public confidence.”

Meet John Tye: the kinder, gentler, and by-the-book whistleblower

Catherine Crump quoted in Ars Technica, August 20, 2014

“It’s too soon to tell what impact Tye’s disclosure will ultimately have on the government’s surveillance practices,” Catherine Crump … told Ars. “People are far more likely to heed his oblique warnings because of the groundwork done by other whistleblowers.”

“Overpoliced & Underprotected”: in Michael Brown killing, neglect of black communities laid bare

john a. powell interviewed on Democracy Now, August 19, 2014

“I think we actually should have a real systematic look at policing in the United States. We should make police accountable to their community. We should actually bring some of the stuff we’re learning about implicit bias into the discourse, so we move beyond ‘Is it racism? Is it not?’ And we should actually have a real conversation about race and what it means in the 21st century.”