SPIA Associate Professor K. Chad Clay wants to reduce human suffering, and he bets you do, too.

In his TEDxUGA 2023 talk, Clay, the director of SPIA’s Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS), argues that most Americans care about human rights, even though the United States, which leads the world according to most economic, military, and cultural benchmarks, performs relatively poorly on most human rights measures.

Clay defined human rights as those recognized by United Nations agreements, including civil and political rights (which include freedom from torture, the right to political participation, the right to free expression), economic, social, and cultural rights, (for example, the rights to education, healthcare, or an adequate wage), and freedom from discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, religion, or any other status. In 2021, the U.S. ranked 114 out of 195 countries on citizen safety from state violence, well behind all other high-income democracies, and dead last among high-income democracies on the right to health care, based on data from 2020, the most recent available.

The United States also largely avoids enforcing human rights on the international level, having ratified just five of the 18 major human rights treaties. It is one of eight countries that has failed to ratify the Convention on the Eliminations of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the only one that declined to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“These failures have two meanings,” Clay shared in the talk. “First, our rights here in the U.S. are less guaranteed than others are all over the world. But second, and beyond that, by sitting on the sidelines of the international human rights movement, the United States has denied the world the benefit of its economic power and cultural influence in seeking better human rights outcomes for everyone everywhere.”

But why?

One obstacle to general support for human rights, Clay maintains, is a lack of useful data on the subject.

“In the U.S., and worldwide, we don’t tend to think of human rights as much as things like economic growth and development or military power,” said Clay. “One of the main reasons for that is that we simply don’t have data and metrics on human rights to the extent we do on all these other aspects of governmental performance and day-to-day life.”

In addition to scarce data, Clay points out, the historical mythos of American exceptionalism clouds our willingness to accept U.S. weakness in any category.

“The United States is the richest country in the world, with the biggest economy,” he said. “It has, arguably, the most powerful military in the world. The metrics we have say that the U.S. is this powerful, strong state doing a great job. The story that people tend to tell themselves is that, sure, the U.S. has problems, but it is better to live here than anywhere else.”

This sense of superiority, at least on human rights, is a delusion, Clay argues.

“The U.S. almost always comes in near the bottom of high-income democracies on the things we might call physical integrity rights, to be free from things like torture, killing, disappearance, arbitrary arrests, and freedom from the death penalty,” he said. “I think it is time for us to reframe our thinking about that and decide how we could actually live up to our ideals. U.S. policy and the world would be better for it.”

As a professor, Clay takes a bottom-up approach to solving this problem of perspective. By educating the populace on the topic of human rights, he hopes to build enough passion for the subject that legislators are forced to take note.

“My belief, because it happened in my life, is that if you learn about this stuff, you start to care about it,” said Clay. “The more people who care about it, the more advantage it creates for the politician that takes it seriously, because we will demand it. I think there’s leverage to be had from political leaders that want to show the degree of distance between U.S. self-image and U.S. behavior, and building a political coalition around doing better.”

On an individual level, he recommends using this knowledge to direct one’s personal investments and philanthropic decisions towards supporting initiatives and nations that protect human rights, doing what we can to disseminate the truth on the topic, and holding elected representatives accountable for their human rights records.

The critical intervention, however, is the collection and analysis of objective, reliable international human rights data. Most existing data depends on self-reporting, considered inferior to that provided by independent third parties.

“In general, we haven’t had human rights data because we can’t trust what states say about it, and they don’t want other people to report on it either,” he said. “Largely, the job of measuring human rights has fallen to academics, nonprofits, and non-governmental organizations around the world.”

In November 2015, Clay and two associates, Anne-Marie Brook and Susan Randolph, responded to this gap by co-founding the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI, pronounced ‘her-mee’). The team, which now consists of 17 core members and dozens of international ambassadors, collaborates with academics and human rights advocates all over the world to produce, analyze, and present data in an accessible way, even those numbers that some nations are desperate to suppress.

“States do not often report how many people their government tortured or imprisoned arbitrarily last year, for obvious reasons,” Clay shared. “So that is hidden information that we have to access in different ways. HRMI has mainly done that by going directly to human rights practitioners and advocates on the ground, to people whose job it is to daily monitor whether states are engaged in these kinds of human rights violations.”

HRMI provides such stakeholders with an invaluable platform; they enter raw country-specific human rights data into this system, which uses sophisticated statistical techniques to translate them into useful numbers for cross-country comparisons and trends across time. The organization publishes its data and research annually on www.rightstracker.org. HRMI’s civil and political rights data release for 2023 rolled out in this June, with an accompanying webinar, followed by economic and social rights data releases.

Though the effort has attracted grants, private donors, and the support of some government agencies, such as the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ongoing financial support is tenuous. Co-founder Anne-Marie Brook has spun off Rights Intelligence, a private-sector application of human rights data with the goal of generating self-sustaining revenue.

“The biggest threat to HRMI, and to all measurement work like this, is the fact that we are not government-funded,” Clay shared, in a bid to attract donations. “We are largely at the mercy of the grant cycle and of private donors, because, again, government is less excited to do that.”

HRMI is just one initiative of the UGA Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS), which Clay took over in fall 2019. Since that time, though hamstrung by COVID-related travel restrictions, he has introduced multiple programs to position the center as a hub for cutting-edge human rights research. The Human Rights Research Lab offers 20 undergraduates per year the chance to support projects like HRMI. The Sub-National Analysis of Repression Project, funded by the National Science Foundation, also provides students the opportunity to get field experience with human rights work. Clay is currently working to create a video series that gives viewers a fun introduction to human rights and how it applies to their daily lives.

Finally, as part of the SouthEastern Rights Network, GLOBIS has helped create and host conferences with human rights scholars from across the region.

“That [network] has turned into a great space for scholars, but also undergrads and graduate students interested in human rights work, to come and present research in a really friendly environment,” said Clay. “My hope is in the long run, that when people think of human rights centers in the United States, GLOBIS pops into their head.”

Clay, a frequent nominee, was a big fan of the TEDxUGA process and the New Media Institute team that supports it, particularly student curators Midori Jenkins, Leah Banko, Olivia Colburn, Anna Van Eekeren, and Saba Alemayehu, Head Curator Esther Kim, and TEDxUGA licensee Megan Ward. The student curators read Clay’s early drafts and pointed out issues with concepts that were too complex for the average viewer and celebrated angles that would hook them in.

“Effectively, if you are chosen to give a TED Talk, you work with student curators to narrow down your topic and work on your scripts,” said Clay. “It is this iterative, collaborative process where you get to work with a really great team of undergrads to refine your work and turn it into something appropriate for a big audience. It makes the talk better than it would be otherwise, by miles and miles.”

He advises future presenters to trust their team as well as the structured, distinct TEDxUGA workflow.

“The process is tough,” said Clay, “and it will almost inevitably pull any potential presenter out of their comfort zone, because it is going to ask them to talk about things in a way that is probably different than they usually do. If you want this to have the widest reach possible, if you want people to truly understand the idea you are trying to share, trusting the people you are working with is the right way to do it.”

To learn more about GLOBIS (globis.uga.edu) and HRMI (humanrightsmeasurement.org), or to donate to these efforts, visit the website for each or contact Dr. Clay at [email protected].

When Calvin Rausch challenged herself to pursue a spot on the TEDxUGA 2023 stage, she thought her topic was obvious. For Rausch, service was always the point. The Marietta native volunteered through high school and college, including service in East Africa. At UGA, she leveraged that attitude into a degree in international affairs and political science, a certificate in nonprofit management, leadership in student government, and the creation of university programs addressing food insecurity and professional readiness among students.

“TED had always been something that I wanted to do,” said Rausch. “Public speaking is such a fun opportunity to meet and share ideas and collaborate. I knew I wanted to talk about service, and assumed that I had to have a study-based approach. So I tried to tie in international affairs and political science: how can service negatively impact a community in ways that you may not expect?”

Rausch, who self-nominated, submitted the short application and a two-minute video to UGA’s New Media Institute (NMI), which houses TEDxUGA. She cleared the first hurdle, and eventually landed an in-person interview with the TED team.

Topic guidance from NMI helped her reframe the question, away from academic outcomes and into a call for the right kind of service. The result was “Informed Altruism: Service Shouldn’t Feel Easy,” in which Rausch shared how mistakes from her own volunteer experiences taught her how to serve more intentionally, responsibly, and sustainably.

ASK AND LISTEN

“We should approach service the same way we do any problem: research first,” said Rausch, on stage. “Because today, I pose that service without knowledge is vandalism, not value.”

If research is paramount, she continued, then the experts are the subjects themselves: those looking to serve should ask the right questions of their service targets in order to identify actual needs and craft solutions that fit the context.

“As an organization of service, you cannot expect the served to come to you, or to change their behavior to receive assistance,” she explained. “A strong nonprofit or service organization molds itself entirely to the needs of the community.”

Rausch offered lessons from her own experience, at home and abroad. When she helped found UGA’s Fresh Express Food Pantry in response to worries over food insecurity among students, she pulled a wagon full of produce through Tate Student Center.

Demand was low.

“It was so public,” she explained. “We became known as the veggie cart, on Mondays and Fridays, and people were embarrassed to stop by. It wasn’t central to where most of the folks, by demographic, live, work, or study on campus. And who wants to eat collard greens for a week straight?”

So, once Fresh Express was established in a brick-and-mortar location, Rausch and her team conducted a survey on student food needs and preferences, leading to insight on  inventory, privacy, and hours that increased demand and helped needy students during and after the COVID pandemic.

The talk also pulled retroactively from Rausch’s experience in East Africa. The “ask questions” mantra has important applications to participatory development, in which international aid organizations invite native representatives to identify problems and inform and co-design solutions. In Uganda, Rausch supported an initiative designed to treat and prevent chigger infestations in children. She noticed, however, that the free denim “shoes” handed out to protect from infection wound up littering the ground outside the clinic, unwanted.

In her time in Tanzania, Calvin became privy to the same trend. “We  encountered the Messai tribe, one of the oldest peoples/societies on Earth,” she explained. “I assumed they would ask for a sink, or a well, or shipments of food. But they were uninterested. . . It is a common misconception in development that all tribal nations are looking to advance [on a Western, Global North] trajectory. They frequently have no interest in straying from their very long histories more than they have already been forced to.”

In her talk, Rausch also challenged volunteers to ask hard questions of themselves, to determine 1) whether you are volunteering for the right reasons, and 2) whether you can contribute what is needed. She shared a slide showing that only 1% of volunteers are actually qualified to perform the required tasks, setting up the problem of applying the right talent to the right problem, and leading to burnout among those with the capacity to serve.

“To organize any [modern] vehicle of service,” she said, “you must be a content creator, and that’s not what a lot of people signed up for. You can’t just put an ad in the newspaper anymore, or slap up a poster in the town square. It’s Instagram and TikTok and email blasts. That’s not everyone’s specialty and is even less likely to be the specialty of, say, a 75-year-old agriculture PhD serving the local farming community.” While adapting leadership styles or personnel can be hard, she shared, nonprofit organizations require much more specialized talent than they once did.

RESPOND

According to Rausch, informed altruism is all about asking, listening, and responding; for some, the response is the challenge. In a world with staggering levels of unmet need, an effective volunteer or public servant must find their own motivation and check their ego at the door.

“I was really concerned that my TED Talk would discourage listeners from helping at all,” she said. “But my message, specifically to my generation, is that the service itself doesn’t have to be big. There is a desire to be a leader, have the title, and consider yourself an authority. There is a lot of sexy service: cutting ribbons, opening doors, and going to galas.

“But,” she continued, “95% of what a good public servant does is so unsexy. The sooner you can find your own internal gratification, the better. Just help, and know that someone who knows better than you about this community, this situation, is in charge. Altruism, at the individual level, is not about seeking leadership for leadership’s sake. Be okay with doing the unsexy, start small, and don’t get overwhelmed.”

Starting in August, Calvin began service with the AmeriCorps at Duke University, as an advocate and federal volunteer for food security among students. When her service ends, in August of 2024, she plans to hike El Camino, before applying to a master’s program in public administration and policy or a similar field. “A lot of people have asked why I am going into the AmeriCorps,” she said. “I was so focused in college on the ‘how’: the ways in which things get done. There are students struggling with professional clothing? The student government opened a clothing closet and ran it for years. Students can’t put food on their plates? How do we implement Fresh Express? I realized that my preoccupation with the ‘how’ was making me stray further and further from the ‘why,’ and had me tumbling on to the next thing.”

Rausch spent time identifying her passions beyond service, and decided to preemptively fight burnout by delaying graduate school and taking her own advice: she turned over the mantle of leadership to serve on the ground.

“I realized that I had spent so much time managing that … I wanted to get my hands dirty, in a place where no one knows me or has preconceptions about who I am,” she explained. “The AmeriCorps seemed to impose a great defined start and end date [on that project]. I would be placed outside of my comfort zone, in such a well-organized and well-established organization that I didn’t have to worry about the implications.”

At the end of her service, she shared, she hopes to be a new person with new career and academic goals. But she doubts that her why, her love of service, will ever fade.

“If I could give advice to anyone reading, remember your why and your passion,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be service. It may mean improving organizations. But if you are not constantly reminded of your why, then maybe you are in the wrong place.”

Jeremiah de Sesto gave himself a massive assignment for TEDxUGA: he sought to use the platform to both share his distinct cultural heritage and celebrate the future of discourse, policy, and lifelong learning.

The 2023 SPIA graduate, who studied management information systems, international affairs, and international business, seized upon this year’s 10^th anniversary theme, “Roots,” to share the importance of maintaining these cultural connections and using them to listen, grow, and succeed.

“Being a first-generation Filipino American, my personal background has significantly influenced my understanding of identity, diversity, and the process of learning,” de Sesto shared. “We’ve all had times [when] our backgrounds and identities have been challenged or even disrespected. It is important to respect identity and the inevitable diversity that comes along with it, because it is a fundamental aspect of human dignity and equality.”

Identity, he continued, encompasses more than demographic checkboxes or buzzwords like race or culture. When de Sesto moved from the Philippines to Fort Lauderdale, Florida at eight years old, he brought along a generational appreciation for family, hard work, hope, and resilience.

However, he also carried with him a child’s concern, guilt, isolation, and longing for home. Other students made fun of his pronunciation, his appearance, and even the unfamiliar smell of the lunch his parents had so lovingly prepared.

“At the time, I was so confused as to why my parents would voluntarily choose to leave lives of comfort [to pursue] a life of unfamiliarity and tireless labor,” he said. “Was it really all worth it for me to receive a quality education in the United States?”

Little Jeremiah was struggling with these questions when he walked into his second-grade ESOL class and spotted the framed Italian phrase “Ancora Imparo” on the classroom wall: “And Yet, I Am Still Learning.”

“My teacher … would explain what that quote had meant to her,” he shared in the talk. “She said that ‘there will always be a concept, something that we don’t fully understand.’ She explained that no matter how many classes we took after hers, field trips we go on, that our stories are never-ending: there is an endless world of knowledge and experiences waiting to be explored.”

de Sesto warmed to the idea. He used the perspective to better understand his parents’ reasons for leaving his native country, find silver linings in his new situation, and approach his education with gratitude and passion. Most importantly, the first-generation college student cultivated a thirst for fresh knowledge that would follow him into adulthood.

That curiosity, he continued, is both the key to true personal fulfillment and the answer to political polarization tendencies that shut down dialogue and challenge consensus on problems and solutions.

“The message of “Ancora Imparo” serves as a constant reminder of our fallibility and the evolving nature of our understanding of complex issues,” said de Sesto. “Embracing humility, promoting dialogue, relying on evidence, fostering lifelong learning, and encouraging collaborative problem-solving can help us overcome political polarization tendencies and create an environment conducive to the development and implementation of effective national and international policies.”

Though humans are inherently fallible, with knowledge limited by our own experiences and perspectives, “Ancora Imparo” allows us to admit this shortcoming and transform arguments into opportunities to gain perspective and knowledge and reorganize our own opinions accordingly.

“Political polarization often arises from misunderstandings and poor communication among different groups,” de Sesto explained. “However, by embracing the principles of “Ancora Imparo,” individuals are more likely to engage in constructive dialogue and strive for a deeper understanding of differing viewpoints. This fosters empathy, bridges divides, and enables meaningful conversations that lead to compromise and consensus-building.”

The lifelong learning philosophy also has applications to the pursuit of knowledge itself, with its emphasis on evidence-based decision-making.

“By promoting the use of reliable data, research, and expert opinions, policymakers can make informed choices grounded in objective analysis rather than partisan ideologies,” said de Sesto. “This approach helps mitigate the influence of polarizing rhetoric and fosters policies that are more effective and beneficial for society as a whole.”

Finally, by seizing upon the fact that we are all still learning, de Sesto hopes to fight against those who dismiss the contributions of young achievers and advocates.

“In the past 10 years, youth have rallied around social issues only to be disparaged for mobilizing [in support of] gun control and climate change,” he shared in the talk. “Young people face accusations of not being able to fully understand complex political and social issues due to our age. If we challenge age, we challenge identity, and if we challenge identity, we challenge lifelong learning.”

de Sesto’s advice to the upcoming class of TEDxUGA presenters? Identify a topic that draws on both your passion and your expertise.

“Your genuine enthusiasm and deep understanding will lend credibility to your ideas,” he said. “Look for topics that are relevant and address pressing issues, with the potential to make a meaningful impact on the audience and resonate beyond the event. Aim for uniqueness and originality, offering a fresh perspective or unique angle on a familiar subject.”

de Sesto is still learning, in a very formal sense. This fall, he matriculated at Harvard University, where he is pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy and a Juris Doctor.

“My hope is to pursue a career in advocating for the fortification of basic rights for all people, while fighting to end graft and corruption in countries such as my birth country of the Philippines,” he said. He considers his identity, as a Filipino American, a young person, and a lifelong learner, to be incredible weapons in this fight.

“I look at the wastes [from my early years in America]: the wasted tears, the wasted food, and the wasted time I spent telling myself that my culture, my beliefs, my traditions were worth giving up for the acceptance of others,” he said. “I hope to tell folks that, rather than assimilate, we must unite in our differences.

“To this day, I am, you are, we are still learning.”