October
29, 2004
Clinton’s
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor Leads Student Seminar
By
Ember Oparowski ’07
As part of the Weissman Center’s fall series, The
Road [Not] Taken: The Real Choices of the 2004 Presidential
Election, John Shattuck, former assistant secretary for state of democracy,
human rights, and labor, held a student seminar October 7 at
4 pm in Porter Hall Lounge. Student seminars are an important
facet of the Weissman Center’s lecture series, allowing
students more access to prominent keynote speakers who visit
the College.
“They [student seminars] provide a setting for students to
make direct connections with speakers that they wouldn’t
otherwise have. We look to the speakers we invite to campus to
provide a model for students on how to engage critically with the
world, how to enter the public sphere in a positive, proactive
way,” said Abby Ferguson, assistant director of the Weissman
Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts.
After participating in the afternoon student seminar, Shattuck
and Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of
Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard, gave a lecture
titled “Human
Rights in the U.S. and Abroad: Who Decides Which Rights are Guaranteed?”
Shattuck was a student at Yale Law School during the tumultuous
civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s. “I
began my interest in civil liberties as an activist,” Shattuck
said, before giving an hour-long speech about his career path.
The treatment of blacks during this time as well as racial issues
sparked Shattuck’s interest in civil liberties.
One of Shattuck’s first cases as a young attorney working
as executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) in Washington D.C. involved the U.S. army’s illegal
surveillance of inner-city riots and their participants as instructed
by Richard Nixon. This case surfaced because professor of politics
Christopher Pyle acted as a “whistleblower” and exposed
the army’s illicit actions by publicizing a five-and-a-half-foot
long report. Shattuck continued working on high-profile cases
involving civil liberties until 1984.
Following Shattuck’s work for the ACLU, he acted as vice
president for government, community, and public affairs at Harvard
from 1984 to 1993. During this time, Shattuck embraced the antiapartheid
movement and urged Harvard and other universities to divest their
stock in South Africa.
In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Shattuck as assistant secretary
of state for democracy, human rights, and labor because he was
a public servant concerned with civil liberties, not a career
politician. As assistant secretary, Shattuck was involved in
trying to stop the Rwanda genocide and was instrumental in creating
the International Criminal Tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Shattuck concluded his talk by emphatically declaring, “Don’t
miss any opportunity to take action for things you believe in.
Do it. Do it. Do it whenever you can.”
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