As I am about to move to another continent, I’ve found two sets of activities in America profoundly disturbing.  First, the condemnation of a proposed Muslim multi-cultural center several blocks away from Ground Zero ; second, advocates for repealing the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution enacted in 1878 to grant citizenship to Africans who had been brought [...]
As a member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), what thrilled me the most about the Annual General Meeting (AGM) was the motivation, focus and determination of the multitude of young human rights activists. OK, having members of Amnesty’s International Secretariat, Country Directors, Board Members and Nicolas Cage sing Happy [...]
I was enthralled when Georgetown University Law Center Professor Emma Coleman Jordan gave the Fourteenth Annual Derrick Bell Lecture on Race in American Society.  Her talk, “Race and New Economic Connection in Subprime Crisis” was the most coherent analysis of economic justice I’ve ever heard. Everything she spoke about relates to points I’ve made in [...]
I’d worked with diplomats and women’s rights activists from several nations to promote the passage in 2000 of 1325, a UN Security Council Resolution that mandates the protection, participation and promotion of women and their involvement in all aspects of peace processes. Last week, during the opening of 64th UN General Assembly, I attended “Peace and Security through Women’s Leadership: Acting [...]
Today my husband Jerry Dunfey and I visited Arlington Cemetary to pay our respects at the graveside of Senator Edward M “Ted” Kennedy and his brothers US President John F. Kennedy and US Senator Robert F Kennedy. Having been at Ted’s funeral Aug 29, we wanted to say good sailing to our friend. I was struck [...]
Dear friend and champion of every issue of importance in the 20th and start of the 21st century, you will be so missed by so many.  The world knows you as the unmatched “Lion of the US Senate”: you are ONE in a lifetime and your loss is irreplaceable.  Those privileged to call you friend, know your passion and [...]
Women and girls are the key to sustainable development and have the capacity to resolve myriad crisis that plague our world. I applaud the many insightful articles in today’s The New York Times Magazine with the cover “Why Women’s Rights Are the Cause of Our Time” (emphasis my own). I have been an advocate of [...]
I’ve been reflecting on how my international work and relationships with people globally mirrors what I have made my “extended family”.  Immaculée Ilibagiza, who survived the Rwandan genocide in a three- by four-foot hidden room with seven other women for 91 days, and Helen Silberberg (1927-2207), my cousin’s mother-in-law who survived the Holocaust in a [...]
Akash Kapur’s New York Times article describes through his personal experiential lens, “creative destruction,” a concept Joseph Alois Schumpeter popularized in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Kapur describes how innovative entrepreneurial development that can sustain long-term economic growth bringing wealth to some in previously impoverished areas, simultaneously often destroys the values of a culture, [...]
I looked around the table at the dinner Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza, South Africa’s High Commissioner to the UK, had hosted in honor of my husband and me on Mandela’s birthday in tribute to our long history of support for South Africa’s freedom. While I simply had invited friends who I knew in London, I saw [...]