 Thank you for tuning in. Welcome to another episode of In the Studio, and today our conversation is going to be about human rights and the champions for human rights among us. My guest is Professor Keith David Wharton-Paul. He is a professor and the Founding Director of Human Rights Studies at UC Davis. This is the first academic program of its kind in the UC Davis system. The UC California system. UC California system. Thank you. And he's a leading American historian of the Middle East and of human rights. He's an expert in the Armenian genocide and on the plight of refugee throughout history. He has lived in Syria and notably in Aleppo. Professor Wharton-Paul is the author of many scholarly publications, articles and talks and the recipient of several awards and honor. He's also the author of Being Modern in the Middle East and Bread from Stones. In Bread from Stones he discusses genocide, mass violence, human trafficking and the displacement of populations among other topics. And finally Professor Wharton-Paul and his students are the organizer of the Davis Human Rights Lectures 2017, a series of talks by prominent speakers and the series is open to the public and takes place at the UC Davis new Maneti Shrem Museum. Welcome. Thank you, Lynn. This is a great, great pleasure of mine. And by the way, if you want to learn more about Professor Wharton-Paul, just go to Wikipedia and you'll find lots of information and most of it I think is accurate. I hope so. As accurate as Wikipedia ever is. So here's my first question. In your view, what is the most flagrant disregard of human rights in the world today? I know it's a difficult question because there are many, Franklin. I think the one that most concerns me at the moment is the number of displaced and refugee people around the world. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that there's about 65 million refugees in the world today. And that's doubled since 2010. So this is a number that's increasing rapidly. And we think that the current trends continue. That number could easily double in the next 15 years. And just to give some context, 65 million people, that's the population of France, for example. One in every 113 people on the planet today as a refugee. And the reason why I think that's one of the major human rights abuses is because human rights abuses create the conditions under which people are forced to flee. People who are refugees are the most vulnerable on the planet to continued violation of their basic human rights. And the unregulated and uncontrolled movement of people often can create situations where host populations become very, in a sense, they can face continued problems of their own, but often become xenophobic and hostile and find far right wing or demagogic politicians very appealing. So it's not that there's one single human rights abuse that refugees are an outcome of the violations of human rights. They are a challenge to the global human rights system. They are vulnerable to human rights abuse. And they create political problems that can amplify existing human rights problems. That's very interesting. And of course, the statistics are an outrage, really. But beyond the outrage, do you know what is being done? If anything at the moment, internationally, I'm thinking, of course, we all know that Europe is overwhelmed with this problem at the moment, but it's not the only continent. Are you aware of some of the steps that... Well, right now the world community is really failing in having any coordinated effort to address the mass movement of people. And it's a very difficult task because it's expensive. It's oftentimes very politically dangerous to do so, to be seen as being soft on refugees and so on. I mean, the German government, for example, Angela Merkel's government, has faced some immense pushback, especially after terrorist attacks and so on, that are ascribed to asylum seekers and refugees. But there's something to keep in perspective here, though, which is that Europe's taken a million or so, for example, of Syrians. Oh, yes. And Turkey. But Turkey's taken one and a half, almost two million. The little country of Lebanon, which maybe has, on a good day, three million people in it, well, but one in four human beings in Lebanon right now is a Syrian refugee. So we need to keep these... We can't address the entire problem, but one of the first steps is to keep the problem in perspective. So wealthy states of Europe, the United States, we need to do more on our side to accommodate the movement of eligible people for resettlement. We need to reach out to states on the edges of these terrible conflicts, especially the one in Syria, to make sure that we reduce both the suffering of the refugees but also help other vulnerable parts of their societies. Places like Jordan are dealing with this the best they can, but also facing economic dislocation for their own people. So these are some of the matters to take in hand. But at the very core of it, though, the best way to deal with a refugee crisis is to make sure it doesn't happen in the first place. And ultimately, we've failed miserably in that regard. Well, you know, I'm glad that you provided this example because I think it's the best way to describe not just one human right, but many disregards for basic human rights, food, nationality, place to live. And so I think you touched on the very heart of the problem. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, well, before we go to your work here at UC Davis, so do you have hope about human rights evolving? You're a historian, a prominent historian. You must know that human rights throughout the history have been existing and non-existing. Where are we now? In my big human rights class, what you came to, the opening day, we talk about slavery. This is the first section is on slavery. And I have my students take up, we have a line I have from my boat, a very long line, and it's about 100 feet long. And we imagine that this line that goes out, we take it all the way out of the classroom, we imagine it's the last 10,000 years of history. And we talk about sort of different kinds of slavery at each point along that line. We keep moving further and further, and we get to the moment in time when human beings decided that, well, chattel slavery, this really isn't what we should be doing. And it led to terrible violence in the form of the American Civil War, but also incredible efforts to end slavery and very noble efforts. Frederick Douglass and others and Abraham Lincoln is at the very end of that rope. But as I say to my students, it happened. The weight of history supporting slavery was immense, but human beings just in the last few hundred years decided they didn't want to have slavery anymore and they were willing to fight and die to end it. And so we look at these terrible violations of human rights, and we see them as so insurmountable. And I remind myself, no, slavery, it's illegal. And we have other fields of human rights or human wrongs that we've successfully addressed as a people. So it takes will and it takes effort and it takes time and it takes patience. And these things are in short supply, unfortunately. Keith, do you think, do you believe that by making students, young people, aware of all these violations of human rights and also making them aware of what human rights are, we will be able to change their mindset or not rather the mindset, but educate them in fighting for the protection of human rights? Our students are, I mean, I know it's sort of popular to diminish the character of millennials, but I don't see that amongst my students. I think they're some of the most idealistic and committed young people I've ever encountered. And I look back at when I was an undergraduate in the late 80s, we were very cynical and very materialistic, and I don't see that amongst our young people. So they come into my courses of human rights and my colleagues are teaching courses on human rights in Latin America or human rights and gender and sexuality. And we teach courses on such horrible topics as genocide and so on. They come in with a great deal of idealism, and I see one of my roles as an educator to help sort of refocus some of that idealism in a very sort of more pragmatic approach. But at the core of that is helping students understand both what human rights are, what human rights they have, but also help them understand that one of their most important responsibilities as young people who have been given the opportunity to study at one of the greatest universities in the world is that they have the responsibility to help defend the rights of others. And that's what should make people hopeful, right? Is that we are taking some of the brightest and best of our young people in California and we are helping them understand and confirm that responsibility. And it doesn't have to mean they become international lawyers or they become, you know, these people working in the tough neighborhoods of Oakland or something before they gentrify. But the idea is that they take these ideas with them into government and society and medicine so they're always conscious of this responsibility to fight for the rights of others, wherever they are. Yes. You recently were your big idea, big idea is an initiative, your idea for a human rights institute that UC Davis was unanimously approved. Can you tell us a little more about that? UC Davis right now is mapping out some of the ideas and directions it wants to take in the future as we reach out to the community for support. And we go, and many of these ideas are about, you know, developments in brain health and agriculture and farming. But our idea to establish the first new Global Human Rights Institute on the West Coast where we're bringing the entire force of the university to bear on human rights problems was recently approved and endorsed. One of only 13 that will really put a great deal of energy behind. So I'm very pleased about that. I am too. I think it's going to be a success. Now you lived in Syria and you lived in Aleppo and so you have seen firsthand Syria the way it was before the war. I remember in 2011, we brought you in in my days at Capitol Public Radio, Jeffrey Callison of Insight interviewed you. And I often think of the words, what you said. The West, and I'm paraphrasing, the West has overlooked and ignored Syria and yet it's the country that is where the conflict is going to be the most severe and it will expand across borders. How much foresight is that? Wonderful. How do you think this conflict is going to go? That's very difficult to answer. I mean, that's an obvious thing to say. And as a historian, I prefer to look backwards than to look forward. But I think the critical issue with Syria is that even though the main city of Aleppo has been recaptured by the government, there's still terrible battles raging throughout the country and there's terrible deprivation. And a significant portion of the Syrian population is not in Syria. So I think that these wars, these civil wars, these international wars can go on and on and that our responsibility is really to try to address the kinds of suffering that these wars have caused the best way we can. And that doesn't necessarily mean military involvement and so on. That means us committing resources and time to addressing the needs of young people and others who have been forced from their homeland by this conflict. Well, I'm afraid our time is up. It went so quickly and there's so many questions. Maybe we will have a follow-up. Thank you so much, Professor Wattenpaw, for taking the time to come and explain to us what human rights are and what you do to protect human rights around the world. I'm honored that you came to talk to us. Thank you. And thank you very much, all of you, for watching. Now if you'd like to stream this episode or even go on our DCTV.davismedia.org, you can watch this interview again. And also it will be available on YouTube. And while you're there, you might want to check some of our other interviews. We have very interesting topics and absolutely wonderful speakers. From all of us here at Davis Media, thank you and see you next time.