Silencing Human Rights Advocates, and Speaking Back: Interview with Jim Cavallaro and Omar Shakir

Recently the US State Department withdrew its nomination of eminent international human rights scholar Jim Cavallaro, solely on the basis of some tweets in which he called out Israeli apartheid and the undue influence of AIPAC (America-Israel Public Affairs Committee--a pro-Israel lobbying group). In 2019, Israel deported Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, for issuing reports calling out similar human rights violations. In this episode, we talk to both of them about their individual cases, and then do a deep dive into the difficulties of exposing Israel's violations of human rights, and talk about ways the message is getting out, nonetheless.

James (Jim) Cavallaro is a visiting professor at Columbia, UCLA and Yale and a professor of the practice at Wesleyan University.  He is also the Executive Director of the University Network for Human Rights. He has taught human rights law and practice for nearly a quarter century, most recently at Yale Law School (Spring 2020), Stanford Law School (2011-2019), and Harvard Law School (2002-2011). In June 2013, Cavallaro was elected to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He served as President of that body from 2016-2017.

Professor Cavallaro has worked in human rights for more than three decades. He received his BA from Harvard University and his JD from Berkeley Law School. He also holds a doctorate in human rights and development (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain). In 1994, he opened a joint office for Human Rights Watch and the Center for Justice and International Law in Rio de Janeiro and served as director, overseeing research, reporting, and litigation before the Inter-American system’s human rights bodies. In 1999, he founded the Global Justice Center, a leading Brazilian human rights NGO. Cavallaro has authored or co-authored dozens of books, reports, and articles on human rights issues, a list of which is available below. He is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese and also speaks Italian and French.

Omar Shakir serves as the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, where he investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza and has authored several major reports, including a 2021 report comprehensively documenting how Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians. As a result of his advocacy, the Israeli government deported Omar in November 2019. Prior to his current role, he was a Bertha Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where he focused on US counterterrorism policies, including legal representation of Guantanamo detainees.

As the 2013-14 Arthur R. and Barbara D. Finberg Fellow at Human Rights Watch, he investigated human rights violations in Egypt, including the Rab’a massacre, one of the largest killings of protesters in a single day. A former Fulbright Scholar in Syria, Omar holds a JD from Stanford Law School, where he co-authored a report on the civilian consequences of US drone strikes in Pakistan as a part of the International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic, an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Affairs, and a BA in International Relations from Stanford.