Dean Jeffrey Brand

CAMBODIA: THE CONVERSATION ALWAYS TURNS TO GENOCIDE

2010-06-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

It was refreshing to hear that USF law students taking the genocide class had, as part of their required assignments, the viewing of the Matt Dillon film – City of Ghosts. I’m told it’s an offbeat comedy about Cambodia filmed in Phnom Penh. I gather there is not a serious scene in the film despite the grim history of its location and a title that could surely make you think you were about to go there.

The truth is you need a break from genocide in this town. With the tribunal on-going, albeit in fits and starts (the verdict on Duch now being prepared with apparently more trials to follow), with controversy over how the trials are being conducted, and with speculation about who future defendants might be (the complex procedures of the tribunal do not make such information immediately available), Phnom Penh is rife with the topic everywhere one turns.

I found that out yesterday over breakfast and dinner. I met with a British consultant at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, Rupert Abbott, for breakfast at my hotel, ostensibly to discuss where USF students would be placed in internships. Indeed, we did discuss the interns, but it was a sideshow to Rupert’s main area of interest – what did I think about the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT), where did I think it headed, and would USF be interested in a joint project to discern the KRT’s legacy for Cambodia.

I detailed my own mixed feelings: glad it was under way, wondering whether the Cambodian population truly supports the effort (recent polls suggest they do), concern about the 30 year gap between the events and the trial, confusion about how defendants are selected and whether it is possible to now hold people accountable in light of the integration of many KR into today’s Cambodia and the death of so many since Pol Pot’s reign ended, musings about how the trials play out in a Buddhist society (does religious belief in the afterlife impact the way a society might judge its own who are living?), and still questioning whether a truth commission might have better served Cambodia’s needs.

Rupert describes his views too and raises the fascinating idea of a project focused on the trial’s legacy for Cambodia. He ponders whether the trials will serve as a reminder for Cambodia’s future? Will it strengthen the rule of law generally? Will it strengthen Cambodia’s domestic courts (where it is said that future trials may take place rather than in the international setting in which the KRT is now being conducted)? All good questions, all worthy of more discussion for future work.

Seated outside for dinner at the newish Le Petit France with a mild, humid but still refreshing breeze blowing, the topic is the same – this time with long-time KRT warrior Helen Jarvis and her husband Alan. Helen is finishing a stint with the tribunal heading its victims’ unit, a job she has held for the past year. For the past 11 years she has immersed herself in genocide work with DC Cam and for the past several years the tribunal itself. The dinner is consumed with talk of the trials. When will the verdict against Duch come down? Why is it taking so long? Is that good or bad? What will the next trials be like? Will the ruling in this first trial expedite future proceedings? Has the victim’s unit made progress over the past year (apparently lots of it)?

Soon dinner is consumed and the questions keep coming. They only stop when we all decide that it is time to call it an evening. I ride back to my hotel in my waiting tuk-tuk. Howard, Helen and Alan head in the opposite direction.

So here’s to City of Ghosts! Medium popcorn, no butter, and a small diet Coke please!

USF LAW STUDENTS LEARN BY DOING IN PHNOM PENH: A GENOCIDE MOOT COURT THAT IS HARDLY MOOT

2010-06-10T17:54:00.000-07:00

At 66 Sihanouk Boulevard, just around the National Monument, is a typical Phnom Penh building – surrounded by a high fence, gates opening to a large courtyard in the front where cars, motorcycles and bicycles park, a door opening into a ground floor and a stairway leading up a few stories. The residents of this typical structure, however, are hardly typical. Inside, live the ghosts of Cambodia’s horrific, tragic past. They are stuffed in folders in file cabinets and stored on hard drives. They are the documentary remains of the perpetrators and victims of the Khmer Rouge destruction of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, tenaciously assembled, organized, analyzed and dissected by Youk Chang and his dedicated band at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC – Cam). This is ground zero in the struggle to educate millions about the catastrophe and to hold accountable the few who are still alive.

This morning five USF law students are seated at tables on the ground floor, sun streaming through windows over their backs, facing an audience of 30 or so, Khmer DC Cam employees, a few interns from other law schools in the United States, Professor de Nike (who has done all of the teaching these past few weeks) and myself as they get set to argue the law and facts they have studied in their genocide class. This is the capstone of their class, a moot court exercise in which they debate whether prosecution of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders and “those most responsible for serious crimes and violations” is possible under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide. The simple signs on the table – Prosecution and Defense – denote their assignments.

The charges detailed in the exercise conjure up the unimaginable history of the Khmer Rouge and speak volumes about the seriousness of the material in which the students have been immersed for the past few weeks:

• Death because of failure to seek humanitarian aid
• Death due to failure to provide basic health care
• Death due to preemptive evacuation of Phnom Penh in April 1975
• Death by execution
• Death and extinction of Vietnamese, Cham and Chinese populations in Cambodia

Death by…and so the charges go!

And they begin. Methodically, comprehensively surveying and arguing the law and facts from the prosecution and defense perspectives, the former hammering home that this is genocide plain and simple within the meaning of the international statute; the latter countering that the crimes may have been horrific, unimaginable, immoral, inhuman (add your own descriptor), but they do not amount to genocide as defined by international law.

As the arguments unfold, I am impressed by the amount of material they have absorbed in such a short period of time and that they are articulating so well. I am impressed by their professionalism in a torrent of horror that hardly needs a prosecutor’s elocution to understand and which no defense counsel could deny.

As I listen, two realizations make me particularly proud of the students’ work and of the law school’s efforts to engage to engage the world. The first is prompted by a student comment. As she recounts facts in support of her argument, she mentions the bank of file cabinets to my right. In them, are reams of evidence that have been assembled in the past fifteen years by DC Cam in their tireless work - evidence that is being used to support the on-going international tribunal that is taking place at this very moment in a specially built courtroom just beyond Cambodia’s airport, south on Highway 4. (On this day the trial is in recess and a verdict will soon be announced in the trial of Duch who ran Toul Sleng, the notorious school-turned-prison where 21,000 perished.) If “moot” means no longer of consequence, then the students’ moot court arguments are hardly that. The evidence they marshal today and the arguments they make affect real lives and the historical record in ways too profound to imagine. Amidst the death and destruction, the students today are arguing a living history that affects not only Cambodia but the world.

I also realize that both sides in this exercise – the Prosecution and Defense – are being asked to do the impossible – put aside one’s gut reaction to the slaughter and argue the law. As I watch, I think, that this is the ultimate test of our commitment to the rule of law with justice – a trial before judgment, a commitment to due process and a fair hearing, no matter how horrific the crime. It is a test we would rather not take - the temptation to surrender those principles too overwhelming. It is a test we often do not pass – images of Guantanamo and the suspension of our sacred right of habeas corpus race through my mind in a jumble of thoughts provoked by the drama the students are presenting. Today, however, these soon-to-be-lawyers are passing with flying colors, tying facts to law and parrying arguments made by opposing counsel.

In a Q and A following the argument, I ask the students about this – how, I ask, did the prosecution get their arms around the fact that they had to argue the law in the context of the facts, that horrific facts were not enough? How, I ask, did the defense make such plausible arguments to acquit murderers of genocide knowing how horrible the facts were? (They argued that other crimes may have been committed but the facts did not amount to genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention – a problem for the on-going Tribunal.)

The answers were heartening; a recognition that bedrock principles were at stake. One student defense counsel pondered my query and said that he had thought about the same question. He said that he had written an email home, joking about the fact that he was going to defend the Khmer Rouge in the moot court exercise and that this was going to be his great contribution to humanity, or something to that effect. I reminded him of the importance of due process and the rule of law to a society and that in fact what he might have said in his email was that he was protecting humanity in the role that he had been assigned as defense counsel to the Khmer Rouge. He thanked me for that thought, but really there was no need for that – the quality, intensity and sincerity of the students’ arguments today demonstrated that they know precisely how high the stakes are and the importance of what they were doing.

Indeed, these students needed no reminders. As I snapped a picture of them when it was over, the relief evident by the smile on their faces, I had a feeling that we were training lawyers who understood the consequences of their actions and the responsibility that comes with the privilege of studying law. I sensed that this generation of USF lawyers would have the guts, instincts and knowledge, when the time came, to do the right thing and to say that this is a line we must not cross. It was a good feeling as I pushed closed the heavy gate at 66 Sihanouk Boulevard and headed to the Java Café for a celebratory drink with the students.

BANTEAY PRIEB, THE CENTER OF THE DOVE: REHABILITATING FOR CAMBODIA’S FUTURE

2010-06-08T16:45:00.001-07:00

The volleyball and basketball courts look like those found in any gym, playground or camp. You can imagine the set up and the spike, or the effortless, all-net three point shot from the corner.

What you can’t imagine is that on these courts play limbless victims of landmines as well as polio victims and industrial accident amputees. This is no ordinary gym, playground or camp. It is Banteay Prieb the vocational rehabilitation center twenty five kilometers north of Phnom Penh where 100 ‘students’, all disabled, gain skills and self-esteem to, as the brochure proudly proclaims “live in peace and reconciliation and the joy of being with others.”

I had visited Banteay Prieb once before in 2002 and am spurred to do it again by a moving article by photo journalist Peter Lemieux that appeared in the Jesuit monthly, Company. I arrive with colleague Howard de Nike, teaching USF’s genocide course in Phnom Penh, in a taxi that turns right off of Highway 4 into a sprawling compound with 20 or more buildings that at once looks primitive and arid but also surprisingly together and lush, bougainvillea blooming with large red and white flowers and palm trees dotting the property.

People are sitting in wheel chairs or sprawled under trellises to avoid the very hot sun. I ask for Father Indon, the Korean Jesuit who has been running Banteay Prieb for the past 7 years, and with whom I’ve been corresponding. After several false starts down dusty paths, we are greeted by a young man in t-shirt and khaki pants who hardly fits your imagine of a Jesuit priest. Father Indon beckons us to a small table off a kitchen in a covered area that is completely open on one side. Soon we are joined by another Korean – a volunteer named Martha who would be our guide for the day.

The story quickly unfolds. The compound was once a military communications center and a Khmer Rouge prison/killing field. In 1991, at the time of the U.N. presence in Cambodia, it began its transformation into what it is today -- Banteay Prieb, The Center of the Dove. More than 1500 victims of land mines, polio and industrial accidents have made their way through the 12 month or more training program en route to productive lives with skills in electronics, sculptural wood carving, sewing, auto and motorcycle mechanics and agriculture. Of the 70 or so employees who make Banteay Prieb a startlingly productive venture, virtually all are Khmer and most of them, graduates of the program. Fr. Indon informs us of this last fact so when we tour the facility, it does not come as a surprise that many instructors are themselves in wheel chairs missing at least one limb and often more.

And tour the facility we do for nearly one and one half hours – Martha leading us from building to building with more poignant and moving images than the mind can absorb:

• A complex electronics class where students and teachers (the ratio is an intimate 8:1, numbers we would love to have a USF) study and dissemble transistor circuit boards, complex diagrams covering the completely full chalk board.
• A sewing building with amputees that turn out dresses, scarves and handbags on machines powered by special chairs that require only a rocking motion to propel the needle to stitch the cloth, a chair that legless students take with them when they leave to work on their own outside of Banteay Prieb.
• A series of buildings that is home to the wheel chair production ‘plant’ where more than 1000 wheel chairs are produced yearly with parts made at Banteay Prieb and imported from Vietnam and Thailand – wheel chairs of beautiful wood with a special third wheel to accommodate Cambodia’s difficult, broken and bumpy streets. This is Banteay Prieb’s only truly profitable enterprise we are told.
• Wood sculpture work – intricate and beautiful taught by a legless instructor to perhaps 20 students who study and work intensely for up to two years to hone this difficult skill that will provide a means of subsistence when they leave Banteay Prieb.
• Pens of pigs, small, medium, large and extra large, ducks, chickens and a rice paddy that is not in production at the moment, all tended by students who will someday emerge into the fields and farms of rural Cambodia – all of them male save for the one mischievous female student with one arm wreaking havoc by a good-natured punch and kick here and there to her male counterparts. Amid the laughter, they do stop long enough for a photograph.

And so it goes. As we walk Banteay Prieb, I say to Howard that the focus on skills training and the students’ work almost makes one forget that these are severely disabled people – the beauty of a particular sculpture, or the cleverness of a magnetic snap on a woman’s shoulder bag, or the efficient production of wheel chairs, the momentary focus. It is impossible, however, to walk the grounds without being jarred back into a sense of amazement at what the human spirit can conquer and what extraordinary souls like Father Indon can inspire (a moniker and claim that he would no doubt disavow.)

The metaphor to Cambodia’s rehabilitation is again inescapable. A maimed country, infrastructure destroyed, skill-less and poor, inching its way back with the help of those willing to preserve and the determination of those who have no choice but to persevere. But this momentary abstraction dissipates amid the reality of where we are and what these people are doing.

It is now nearly three hours since we arrived. We visit the Banteay Prieb crafts store, a small, metal, one-legged disabled Jesus crucifix my favorite purchase for a Jesuit colleague. The yellow, metered taxi sits incongruously under a palm tree near one of the eight buildings that serve as dormitories for small groups of students and their mentors. Father Indon and Martha thank us for coming. I promise to stay in touch as ideas for sustained contact and cooperation rumble through my head.

The cab exits Banteay Prieb and we turn left onto Highway 4, heading back to Phnom Penh in a torrential downpour that was kind enough to wait until we finished our tour before it unleashed its fury. Within minutes, the cab is leaking water through the overhead light and the driver is trying to keep one eye on the road while wiping down the console that is now wet as are we. This should be our biggest problem I think as an inspiring Banteay Prieb recedes in the distance.

CURRY AND GENOCIDE: A SCREENING OF KAMPUCHEA: DEATH AND REBIRTH

2010-06-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

How many times since we’ve been working in Cambodia (1994) have we heard accounts of the story: April 17, 1975, the ‘liberators’ led by Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, force an evacuation of all of the cities in Cambodia and begin a so-called agrarian revolution that ends in the elimination and murder of 2 million Khmer or a quarter of the population of Cambodia or some horrific number depending on whose account one hears. Nowhere, however, is that story told with more force than in the German film “Kampuchea: Death and Rebirth” which screened last night here in Phnom Penh in a special showing for the five USF law students who are studying war crimes and experiencing first-hand the Cambodia that fell victim to Pol Pot’s reign of terror and the culmination of decades of colonial domination – a destruction from which Cambodia struggles to recover to this day.

We all took tuk-tuks (which have taken over the city in the past five years, colorful ‘carriages’ pulled by a motorcycle) to the Meta House where Nicco, the German owner and his Cambodian wife, prepared a simple curry dinner atop their multi-story building that houses an art gallery, bar and small ‘theater’ where the film was shown. In fact, Meta House is in some ways is a metaphor for the decades-long recovery of this maimed country: an effort to create community, rejuvenate art, provide a meeting place, a cold beer (sort of cold), and the inevitable hang out for the ex-pat community that is ever present as aid projects from around the globe continue (the headline in today’s Phnom Penh Post reports that 3.0 billion in assistance is slated for Cambodia through 2013.)

We all walk up flights of steep stairs to the patio on the roof where dinner was served in the open air. Adjacent to it is the bar and a screening area where films are regularly shown – a theater that seats perhaps 50 and a sizeable screen on the wall.

Kampuchea: Death and Rebirth was filmed right after the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia in 1979 bringing a formal end to the Pol Pot time although the KR resistance continued into the 1990s. The film begins with footage of the ceremonial signing of the agreement between the KR and the Vietnamese as a backdrop to the April 1975 evacuation of Phnom Penh and the unimaginable terror, mayhem and destruction that followed. 90 minutes later one is drained by the stories of suffering and loss. Even the return to the cities, the ouster of Pol Pot and the KR, and heartening and moving scenes of students returning to abandoned schools that sat empty for years cannot erase the sense that the trauma will never fully end. Sitting amid dust and ruble as they return to Phnom Penh, Khmer, young and old, bear witness to the starvation, forced labor, and death of virtually all of their families. The survivors find it as incomprehensible as we do to this day: The killing of their own by their own.

Yet, there is a more than a glimmer of the indominatbility of the human spirit as small children begin again to learn to read and as teachers return to school rooms when just months before intellectuals – as they were called – were routinely slaughtered. In a moving scene, the young KR still barely in their teens, now prisoners, recount how they became cold blooded murderers. The film notes poignantly that these “murderers” were themselves victims of the Pol Pot time, having been ordered to murder the very people – the so-called intellectuals – who could have educated them.

The film seems interminable. Not because it is too long, but because of the pain it evokes from the voices on the screen and to me (and I suspect all of us) as the scenes continue: the starvation, the words of Sary’s wife, the supreme KR apologist claiming it all the fault of the Vietnamese juxtaposed brilliantly with the actual plight and words of the Cambodians imprisoned, shots of Toul Sleng, a shot of an abandoned school being reclaimed with the grisly find of human remains in a freezer left there by the KR who occupied the site for four years, and on…and on…and on. And finally, we are back where the movie began – at the ceremonial signing, knowing now the reality behind the handshakes and the and the embraces of the KR and the Vietnamese.

As the movie ends, we all traipse down the steep, uneven stairs. There is little to say. What could one say? But the movie is a fitting prelude to the students as they prepare for a moot court presentation that they will be making on Wednesday at the Documentation Center of Cambodia (D Cam). They know and must feel that this is no academic undertaking. The arguments they make are being played out in real time at the tribunal and involve the lives and deaths of real people – tragically millions of them.

PORTRAIT: PHUNG QUANG HUY, DIRECTOR GENERAL, VIETNAM CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, VCCI: FINDING ANOTHER PATH

2010-06-07T02:17:00.000-07:00

Tuyen, who works for the SIIR USAID labor project, and I are in the back of a Hanoi taxi headed for the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, VCCI, the agency that represents employers in Vietnam. At least we think we are headed for VCCI. Traffic is at a complete standstill on a five lane road (if there is such a thing as a ‘lane’ in Hanoi) that is quickly narrowing to one to accommodate construction. We are trapped in a blizzard of cars, motorbikes, and bicycles trying to make it past a construction site that is shielded from view by corrugated steel. At one point, the ladder on the back of a motorbike nearly makes it through the rear window of the taxi. My camera is pointed out the window, taking pictures of the congestion, road side stores, and masked-women avoiding pollution sitting side saddle on motorbikes.

We pull up to VCCI which is housed in a multi-story modern building about fifteen minutes from the center of Hanoi. On the sixth floor is the office of Phung Quang Huy whose Spartan digs, a metal table, four metal chairs and the usual picture of Ho Chi Minh on the wall, match perfectly his simple dress – grey shirt and black pants befitting a party official.

But Mr. Phung is anything but a party official. Rather, he is spending his time trying to establish dispute resolution procedures to handle cases that he claims are arbitrarily decided by the Department of Labor without input from employers or workers. He is looking to create, he says, a “ten year plan” to develop and train an infrastructure – one that can handle both collective and individual disputes.

His hope is to establish an independent arbitration center, as he calls it, to work without government interference to resolve equitably labor disputes. In his vision, there would be centers at both the national and local level, each with clear goals and tasks. To create such a center he is looking for support for a pilot project which no doubt he hopes I could help facilitate in light of my connection to SIIR. I suspect that also explains his desire to see me, changing his schedule when I had informed his assistant that I could not make the Friday date that Mr. Phung originally offered.

The meeting does not last long, Mr. Phung’s points having been made, a follow-up meeting with the SIIR project, a possible supporter, is suggested by Tuyen and tentatively planned for the following week. During the meeting, Mr. Phung’s passion, like Professor Binh’s, to “get it right” seems clear. Through their eyes Vietnam’s labor laws are ill equipped to resolve disputes with the interests of workers and employers in mind. Each in their own way is searching for a new way, for new models that are yet to be defined and whose relationship to the state remains unclear.

PORTRAIT: DO NGAN BINH, Ph. D., PROFESSOR OF LABOR LAW, HANOI LAW UNIVERSITY: PASSIONATE, FRUSTRATED, SMART AND SEEKING TO GET IT RIGHT

2010-06-07T02:16:00.000-07:00

The second day of seminars: We are at the labor university and she introduces herself as a Professor Do Ngan Binh, a labor law professor at the Hanoi Law University (where USF has conducted judicial training workshops in the past.) She is firing off comments and questions at a rapid pace. Why is the number of unionized employees so low in the United States? What should the model of labor and industrial relations be in Vietnam? How can Vietnam best resolve disputes, particularly when many labor issues never make it to the courts? How can Hanoi Law University cooperate with the University of San Francisco? Isn’t this the laundry list of must-dos to resolve problems of legal labor education, she asks, rattling off financial resources, skills training, knowledge of the substantive law and clinical experiences for students?

I try to take notes, scribbling down her staccato verbal bursts. Staring at the pages of my recently purchased Vietnamese notepad, I patiently try to respond, emphasizing that surely I could not suggest the best model for labor relations for Vietnam and, moreover, there is likely no one model that fits all given our different problems, stages of development and historical, cultural and political differences. With all of this she takes no issue but she seems edgy and frustrated as I conclude my answer, expressing a hope for future extensive cooperation between USF and HLU.

After the session, Professor Binh approaches me and firmly grips my hand, asking whether we can meet later that afternoon to finish our conversation. I agree and five hours later we are sitting in the offices of the USAID funded labor project – SIIR – that has put the seminars together. Seated around a small circular table with black glasses perched on her face and her black hair pulled back, Professor Binh pulls out her notepad and begins to write furiously, attacking the page, words pouring forth in Vietnamese connected by arrows and lines as if she were solving an organic chemistry problem. I look at the translator – a young, very bright lawyer named Ha who has helped me so much during the trip – with confusion and a smile. Ha returns my smile as if to say, I’m not sure what Professor Binh is saying either, but I’ll do my best to explain it.

Ha indeed does try to explain, but it takes some time to really understand what is on Professor Binh’s very quick and very organized mind, even if it is not apparent to this Western Dean. At bottom, Professor Binh is explaining that the desire for a harmonious and peaceful workplace concerned with the interests of both employees and workers – a concept we discussed at length at the seminar – cannot be realized without principles and processes in labor law that are not part of Vietnam’s current framework. She is not sure what they are or how to articulate them, but she knows they are there and accessible if only she can get advice from others, study, and have access to those drafting the law, the latter apparently a particularly sore point because she is consulting on the new labor code but having difficulty with the person at the Ministry with ultimate authority who she says “just does what he wants”.

Her passion is evident. So is her desire to get it right for Vietnam. As I listen to her, I hear a tone that comes from many here – frustration coupled with excitement about what might be accomplished in the future; and, a hope that the future will bring change that really addresses Vietnam’s workplace issues. I listen patiently knowing that I surely don’t have the answers. I do promise resource materials, continuing email dialogue, and more exchanges with Hanoi Law University. Professor Binh seems momentarily satisfied, and, as fast as she was writing, she again firmly grips my hand, thanks me for my time and leaves, promising to stay in touch – and I have no doubt that she will!

LABOR LAW SEMINARS IN VIETNAM

2010-06-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

Two days of labor law seminars for me – one at the Ministry of Labor and the other at the Ministry’s labor university – while Professor Markham gets the students settled and lectures on antitrust law before the Vietnam Competition Agency. The Vietnamese are particularly interested in labor issues as their labor laws are in the throes of a major revision. 12 years ago, USF trained labor judges in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and as recently as this past January, hosted a Vietnamese labor delegation that asked us to critique the latest version of the labor code. In March, we followed up with an analysis – particularly portions relating to trade unions – and the seminars were a follow on to that analysis.

Both days of labor talks focused on an overview of our labor laws with a particular emphasis on union-employer relations, an issue with which Vietnam struggles mightily. The second seminar at the labor university maintained a similar focus but also included discussions about labor education in law schools. The Vietnamese are very interested in our rich mix of substantive courses, clinics, student organizations, and connections with alumni as we fashion education focused on worker justice – an area of particular strength at USF.

Images:

• The contrast between the ministry audience and the labor university attendees: The former majority male, older, more seasoned and clearly more focused on the substantive law and the implementation of the new labor (whenever it might take final form). The latter, virtually all labor law professors and lecturers, all very young and almost entirely female. All were interested in our structure (and surprised at the small percentage of our workforce that is unionized), but also very concerned about how to educate working people about the labor laws and how to educate lawyers and officials to effectively implement the labor code.

• The issues: So similar to ours in so many ways – achieving worker/employer balance to protect the interests of both, and establishing dispute resolution procedures to resolve problems early. But Vietnam’s conflict between a centralized state and allowing workers the right to freely associate is quickly apparent as is the fact that the interest in dispute resolution is motivated by the recognition that government processes – administrative and the courts – are not up to the task of handling the workplace strife in this nation of nearly 100,000,000 million people.

• The reality: Despite the labor code drafts, any final resolution of the labor code is a long ways off, a fact that may not be explicitly admitted but which is obvious as the dialogue continues (and a fact exacerbated by the pendency of the next People’s Congress which will help set Vietnam’s future course.)

Back in Hanoi - Connecting, Learning, Assisting Again

2010-05-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

I am back in Hanoi, one year later. This time with Professor Jesse Markham and six students who eagerly await their placement in law offices and NGOs – three in Hanoi and three in Ho Chi Minh City (all wonderfully organized by Jesse). My most immediate impressions are twofold. First, our programs have grown and matured in the fifteen years since we first came here, knocking on doors to see how USF might assist Vietnam 20 years after the war had ended. Those initial efforts ended up in a conversation with the Vice Minister of Justice, and led to a decade and a half of involvement training judges, developing relationships with University (Hanoi Law University and the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law), exchanging faculty, and presenting seminars on myriad topics ranging from administrative law to decision making in the courts to labor law to legal education; and, the impact that student work in developing countries can have on their lives.

Today, the students, myself and Jesse sat around a dark wood table bedecked with flowers, microphones, fruit, hot tea and iced coffee in a nicely appointed conference room sheltering us in the comfort of air conditioning from the sweltering heat outside. We visited the Supreme Peoples Procuracy at the invitation of the Deputy Procurator General, Dr. Nga, where the topic was judicial reform and ways that USF might assist – including professors coming to Vietnam to lecture on topics related to court reform and Vietnamese officials coming to San Francisco to observe judicial administrative processes and to receive training with an eye to adopting what might work for Vietnam. As we sat around the table, Dr. Nga flanked by four other officials of the SPP, it struck how deep our roots go in Vietnam and the access we have been able to attain because of our past work and relatively new contacts with programs in Vietnam like STAR, funded by USAID and engaged in multiple law reform projects with many Ministries. (Indeed, for the next three days, I’ll be working with the Ministry of Labor, discussing various labor-related dispute resolution issues.)

But the most salient impression since being here is the opportunity that these programs provide for our students. It is a serious chance to engage in Vietnamese culture, to learn the ways of folks with a completely different system of government, to make new friendships and contacts, and to gain a perspective that would be impossible working in the United States. And what’s most exciting is that the students get it, evidenced by their thoughtful conversation and excitement at meetings with Vietnamese officials and dinners introducing them to the ways of Vietnam.

More thoughts about our work and students to follow: To be continued.

Haiti Teach In USF Campus 4/19 12 - 7 250 McClaren!

2010-04-19T07:50:00.000-07:00

Today, April 19, 2010, the University of San Francisco and its School of Law are hosting a community teach-in about Haiti, providing the context in which the quake occurred, the response to date and ideas for action. Noon to 7 on the USF campus in McClaren 250. Here is the program and my opening remarks. It should be spectacular.

Program:

University of San Francisco - Haiti Teach-In

Monday, April 19, 2010: Noon - 7

12:00 – 12:05 Welcome, Dean Jeffrey S. Brand, USF School of Law

12:05 – 12:20 Welcome Address by USF President Stephen A. Privett, S.J.

12:20 – 1:15 First-Hand Accounts (USF Professor Lois Lorentzen, moderator)

· Walter Riley, civil rights attorney and chair of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

· Doug Sovern, KCBS radio reporter

· Judith Faustin-Gabriel, Novato-Horeb Haitian Seventh Day Adventist Church

1:15 - 2:15 Cultural, Political, Religious and Historical Context (Jeff Brand, moderator)

· Brian Concannon, director, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and chair, Lawyer’s Earthquake Response Network

· Pierre Labossiere, cofounder, Haiti Action Committee and boardmember, Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

· James Taylor, professor of politics, University of San Francisco

2:15 – 2:25 Break

2:25 – 5:25 The Response

· 2:25 – 3:25: Humanitarian Aid (USF Law Professor Dede Donovan, moderator)

o Anne Bartlett, professor of sociology, University of San Francisco

o Annie Blackstone, U.S. director, Sion Fonds, an NGO working in Haiti

o Mariam Danielyan, USF law student

o Pamela Keenan, resource development coordinator, What If? Foundation

· 3:30 – 4:25: Medical (Dean Judy Karshmer, USF School of Nursing, moderator)

o Dr. Barbara Newman, emergency medical physician

o Jeanne Krafft, registered nurse and activist with Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos

o Enna Trevathan, professor, USF School of Nursing and nurse manager, VA Palo Alto Hospital

o Especianise Loresca, Haitian medical student

· 4:30 – 5:25: Legal (USF Law Professor Bill Hing, moderator)

o Brian Concannon, director, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and chair, Lawyer’s Earthquake Response Network

o Margaret O’Shea, senior associate, DPK Consulting

o Karen Musalo, clinical professor and director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, UC Hastings College of the Law

o Richard Boswell, professor and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, UC Hastings College of the Law

o Holly Cooper, lecturer and associate director, Immigration Law Clinic, UC Davis School of Law

5:30 – 6 or 6:15 Student Projects (All together on the stage if possible)

· School of Law (Nicole Phillips, IDJH, moderator)

o Anthony Phillips on Haiti's debt to France

o David Smart on Haiti's onerous debt to international financial institutions

o Jeff Kaloustian on economic and social rights of Haitians in Haiti and the Dominican Republic

o Dana Isaac on her experience preparing Temporary Protected Status immigration applications for Haitians during a spring break project in Miami

· Undergraduate Students (Moderator to be designated, Margaret or Donal?)

o Students Kalie Patterson, Anna Tull, and Alia Al-Sharif on their Haiti relief bingo fundraiser, which raised more than $18,000 for relief efforts

6:00 or 6:15 – 7:00 or 7:15 Reception and music: Kalbass Kreeyol

Opening Remarks

I am Jeff Brand, Dean of the USF School of Law, and proud to welcome you to the University of San Francisco and our Haiti Campus Community Teach-In. First things first. As you can surmise from the program, today’s symposium has been a huge undertaking. We all owe deep gratitude to the organizing committee, particularly USF’s Vice President for University Life, Margaret Higgins, Professor Lois Lorentzen, University Director of Media Relations Anne Marie Devine and Law School Communications Director Angie Davis. And of course a special thank you to all of our presenters.

A word about the schedule: To paraphrase a great blues line, too many knowledgeable people and too little time. Thus, we will keep the program moving to make sure that we receive the full benefit of the knowledge of all of the incredible folks with us today. And despite, the seriousness of the topic, we will end the day’s proceeding on a note of hope with a reception and music provided by the Haitian Creole band, Kalboss Kreeyol. We hope that you can stay for everything.

On Tuesday January 12 at 4:52 P.M. Haitian time a 7.0 magnitude earthquake with an epicenter 16 miles of west of Port Au Prince wreaked havoc in Haiti. Within a week with at least 52 aftershocks registering 4.5 or greater continued to shake Haiti, leaving an estimated 230,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and 1,000,000 homeless. 250,000 homes and more than 30,000 commercial buildings lay in ruble. Among those killed were Archbishop of Port-au-Prince Joseph Serge Miot,^[12] and opposition leader Micha Gaillard.^[13][14] The headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission collapsed, killing many, including the Mission's Chief, Hédi Annabi.

To be sure, over the next seven hours, 35 or so students, doctors, nurses, lawyers, activists, journalists, and professors will bear witness to the unspeakable tragedy resulting from the earthquake. The biographies and work of these talented and committed individuals are in the summary provided to you.

The goals of today’s proceedings, however, are far broader than merely reporting on the horrors that we witnessed on our television screens for weeks following the quake. Today we seek to understand the historical, cultural, political and religious context in which the ground shook as well as the response that the quake continues to engender and the challenges that the response faces. Perhaps most critically we bring together people who have been involved in Haiti-related work long before the quake to consider courses of action to address Haiti’s immediate and long term needs. Indeed, it is no accident that we have chosen the title Teach-In for today’s gathering – we as a community gather today to educate ourselves about Haiti’s past and present with an eye to justice for a country which for too long has been ravaged by world economic and military policies and not just a 7.0 earthquake. So today, individuals from law schools and Universities, from NGOs with names like the Haiti Action Committee, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the What If? Foundation, and Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos come together to help us accomplish that goal.

I would be remiss if I did not say how proud I am that this teach-in is being held on this campus where our mission of Educating Minds and Hearts to Change the World drives our work. The evidence of the impact of that eloquent and powerful mission is evident at the law school where students seek to fashion a more humane and just world traveling to Geneva to advocate for human rights, to Phnom Penh to work on war crimes issues,to the south to fight the death penalty, to the fields of California to work with migrants and as close as the Tenderloin to lend a hand to the homeless.

The ardor for our mission at USF is underpinned by the Jesuit values of excellence and service, and galvanized by the eloquent, passionate and principled leadership for the past decade of our President Father Stephen A. Privett. Steve, we appreciate your unwavering support of all that we seek to do at USF in the pursuit of justice – this symposium being but one example. It is my pleasure to introduce the President of the University of San Francisco, Father Privett.

Letter from Cali Colombia

2009-12-29T11:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Colleagues:

Greetings from Colombia where Sue and I just spent four intense, edifying and poignant days at Javeriana the Jesuit university in the city of Cali, a sprawling metropolis of 2.5 million which, to the novice observers, mirrors the complexity of the country itself. I have no illusion of understanding the politics or economy of this country which, by the admission of its own people, is mired in corruption and autocratic rule. My take-away from our time in Cali is simply this: Jesuit education can be an inspiring means to connect the heart and mind and the classroom and the community; and, Javeriana’s mission and work, much like our own work at the law school, can be a powerful tool for the common good.

We came to Cali to discuss possible connections between Javeriana and USF. Our visit followed a visit by the Father President and Provost of Javeriana to USF two months ago. The specifics of that relationship are complicated by dangers that pervade the country (witness our visit to the Provost’s beautiful home where armed guards and tight security ring the compound), language barriers, lack of financial resources, and the questionable availability of faculty given our engagement in so many places around the world. That said, it would be difficult to find a more affirming venue for the value of our mission and the importance of our students’ engagement in the community. There are many stories to tell, but one image is particularly impressive: the seamless connection at Javeriana between the classroom, the scholarly research of its talented faculty and the plight of displaced persons, victims of family violence, and young orphaned children who live in the poorest of conditions in Cali’s Agua Blanca.

I heard about Javeriana’s ambitious clinical programs on our first day here during discussions held at their modern law school housed in one of the many red brick buildings that dot the campus on the southern edge of the city, creating an inspired sense of architectural unity amidst beautiful landscaping (each building is named after a tree that grandly grows at its entrance). All fourth and fifth year law students are required to take the clinic. (In Colombia, legal education is a five year undergraduate program.) However, it was not until we visited the clinic itself and one of the many community organizations with which it works, Paz y Bien in the Agua Blanca, that the centrality of student and faculty engagement became so clear.

The clinic (the Consultorio Juridico y Centro de Conciliation) is in the center of the city adjacent to one of the few remaining colonial buildings in Cali, the Hall of Justice. There, three or four full time faculty work with law students, handling a caseload that exceeds two hundred. The focus of the work often involves conciliation, mediation and arbitration on criminal, labor, housing and commercial matters, among others. The professors and students who hosted us described the more than thirty NGOs with whom they work to ameliorate every conceivable social ill ranging from transparency in government (Cali Visible) to the protection of fundamental human rights (Atencion Inmediata).

Paz y Bien Foundation is one of those NGOs. Its driving force is Sister Alba Stella Barreto Caro who has created a network of programs to empower women, care for orphaned children, provide micro loans to foster financial independence, provide mediation to stem violence, and educate citizens about their legal rights. Paz y Bien operates over multiple blocks in the Agua Blanca where one can visit nine homes that provide care for 500 children, nurseries, a community kitchen, a store that sells used clothing and other items to provide basic necessities, the micro loan ‘bank’, and a meeting place for displaced persons – those victimized by the left and the right and driven from their homes under threats of death. (On Peace Thursdays groups of displaced persons meet to share stories in facilitated support groups.)

Javeriana clinic students support the effort. So do Javeriana faculty in multiple disciplines whose research is frequently dedicated to support the work of Paz y Bien as well as other NGOs. Two professors, Alejandro (law) and Yvonne (psychology), were our guides during our three hour visit. They described student and faculty work tutoring and providing psychological and occupational counseling, holding workshops to educate residents about how to make claims to enforce their rights, and engaging in empirical scholarship to support mediation in the criminal justice system. The list could go on and on.

The most compelling moments during our visit on a rainy morning (punctuated by a 5.6 earth quake that fortunately was buried deep in the earth with an epicenter 25 kilometers from the Agua Blanca – you can take Jeff and Sue out of San Francisco, but …) came from the people themselves. 16 year old Alberto, whose sweet face and beautiful black dreadlocks belie the horrors of his story, described his journey from the violent streets to Paz y Bien. Alberto joined us in our discussions with Paz y Bien staff and, despite his own travails, expressed shock when I described USF’s work to eliminate the sentence of life without possibility of parole for juveniles – proclaimed Alberto in disbelief that such a penalty existed in the United States: “That would be the end of childhood.”

At the displaced persons house a block from Paz y Bien’s main facility, we met with Camilo, Barbara, Edema and Emma who took turns describing the violence that uprooted them from their self-sufficient lives and homes, terrorized they said by the government, the paramilitary and the guerrillas. Relating her story, Barbara, who travels from house to house nightly with her children to find shelter (Paz y Bien does not have the resources to provide housing for all those in need) intoned: “It takes a lot of work to live.” Camilo, in his serape and broad brimmed hat insisted on standing as he described going “from one hell to another” when he was forced from his land by threat of death. Estimates are that there are as many as four million Camilos, Barbaras, Edemas and Emmas in Colombia.

Despite the hardship, a sense of joy and hope pervades Paz y Bien. It was evident in the passion of Fannie who overseas the legal programs, and on the smiling faces of more than one hundred children eagerly anticipating a holiday puppet show and Christmas gifts in a large recreation room in one of the many buildings in the neighborhood devoted to providing social services.

The ultimate shape of any relationship with Javeriana is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the connection between classroom and community is deeply ingrained in the psyche of its students, staff and faculty. It was heartening to realize that the mission articulated on Javeriana’s web site mirrors precisely our own. It was heartening to be able to exchange stories with our hosts about USF’s efforts to make our mission reality and to hear the President and Provost explain how impressed they were with our sense of purpose during their recent visit. At the same time, it was challenging to contemplate how we can continue to achieve our ambitious aspirations.

That’s the report from Colombia. I look forward to seeing everyone after the New Year. Have a joyous holiday season.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Symposium: In a Down Legal Market, Law Schools Must Change Too

2009-09-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

On Thursday September 17th, the University of San Francisco School of Law held a timely and informative symposium focused on navigating the changing legal employment landscape in the wake of the economy's collapse last September. Law students, lawyers, headhunters and media assembled, some seeking jobs, some looking to hire and all curious about what the new landscape means for the practice of law.

The symposium's timeliness and importance was evidenced by a packed house and riveting panels focused on the big firm environment, solo and small firm practice, alternative legal careers and future models for legal careers. The San Francisco Business Journal captured its flavor. http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2009/09/debating_the_future_of_young_legal_eagles.html

But a funny thing happened on the way to the symposium: if the focus was legal employment post-graduation, which it surely was, another question kept presenting itself. What does all of this mean for legal education and for students before they graduate? And the answer is apparent: plenty!

Panelist after panelist raised questions and described emerging practices that must impact the way we legal educators conceive our work. For me, the 'aha!' moment came during a panel on future careers that touched on new law firm models emerging from the ashes of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of venerable and respected law firms such as San Francisco's Heller Ehrman. Panelists made it clear that the focus is shifting to hiring senior, experienced attorneys and that the traditional training grounds for lawyers -- the firm environment -- were fast disappearing.

The reason for this trend pierces the heart of the crisis, exposing the unsustainable way legal employment is currently structured: a partner/associate structure that depends on long hours for associates billed at very high (astronomical?) rates and a distancing of the partner from doing much of the actual work that the client expected the partner to perform. Associates were leaving firms in large numbers, unhappy with the environment, and clients, particularly in these economic times, have revolted. The upshot: emerging new models in which experienced lawyers are being hired at much reduced rates, often on a project-basis, to perform work directly for the client. Participants at the symposium, such as Paragon Legal and Virtual Law Partners (VLP), using such models reported big successes and booming business.

In the wake of this, the young lawyer and the new graduate will find a job market with more limited options along with training opportunities that may be hard to come by, reported many on the panels. It was time, Andrea Chavez, founder of VLP, for young lawyers to "adjust their expectations".

But it's not just the young lawyers that have to adjust. Law schools must too. Where will training be provided? Where will the basic skills be learned? Law schools must step up and enhance even more the skills training that we know must be a part of modern legal education, including the ability ferret out unethical conduct and to act professionally.

It is not enough for law schools to claim that "we do this already". Indeed, we do it now, but not enough. Just ask the Carnegie Foundation whose latest report on legal education recommends more skills and professionalism training. Just ask the AALS whose recent report on best practices in legal education paralleled much of the Carnegie recommendations. Both reports were published well before the crash, but the crash emphasizes the critical need to follow through on curricular reforms that will make skills and ethical training more front and center than ever.

The crash also highlights the need for law schools to do something that may be even more difficult -- maintain the spirit and passions of our students as they face the bleakest job market in decades. Our students are bright and motivated. They want to do the right thing. How else would one explain USF Law students engaging the community by the hundreds, serving meals and working with children and prison inmates? How else would one explain USF law students going around the world, around the nation and all over California this summer working in nine developing countries, in five southern states and here in San Francisco on projects ranging from war crimes to law reform to the fight against the death penalty to issues affecting migrant workers. These spirited students demand our commitment to create opportunities to feed their insatiable appetite to do good.

So as we look at the financial crisis, legal educators must not only focus on what is happening in the legal job market, we must also focus on what we're doing right at home in our law schools. We owe it to our students and to the profession. Indeed, a funny thing happened on the way to the symposium!

USF LAW SYMPOSIUM -- HOW TO NAVIGATE THE CHANGING LEGAL LANDSCAPE -- KICKS OFF

2009-09-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

The symposium on changes in the law post- economic collapse has kicked off. I offered introductory remarks that explain our hopes for the gathering. We're also on Twitter detailing some of what is going at this tremendously useful colloquium. The place is packed which is gratifying and also a statement about how complicated the times.

Introductory Remarks

MY NAME IS JEFFREY BRAND AND I AM THE DEAN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL OF LAW. WE ARE HONORED TO PRESENT TODAY’S SEMINAR: “HOW TO NAVIGATE THE CHANGING LEGAL LANDSCAPE FROM THE GROUND”.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS GATHERING CANNOT BE OVERSTATED: A YEAR AGO ALMOST TO THE DAY, THE COUNTRY SUFFERED ITS BIGGEST ECONOMIC COLLAPSE SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION – A COLLAPSE THAT AFFECTED THE ENTIRE COUNTRY AND DRAMATICALLY CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION AS WE KNOW IT. VENERABLE, RESPECTED FIRMS DISAPPEARED IN DAYS. OFFERS OF EMPLOYMENT WERE DEFERRED OR SIMPLY WITHDRAWN. THE PUBLIC SECTOR (WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT AT THE TIME THE CRISIS) FROZE JOBS AND ENGAGED IN LAYOFFS. LAW STUDENT CHATTER FOCUSED ON OPPORTUNITIES LOST AND DEBT INCURRED. LAW SCHOOLS REVISED BUDGETS AND CONSIDERED THE IMPACT OF THE CRISIS.

NO INSTITUTION, AND NONE OF US HERE, CAN CLAIM IMMUNITY FROM THE DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS. EVEN TODAY, AS THE MARKET REBOUNDS, THE CRISIS REMAINS, AND THE ULTIMATE IMPACT ON THE PRACTICE OF LAW REMAINS UNCERTAIN.

TODAY’S SYMPOSIUM IS AN EFFORT TO SURVEY THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE POST-LEHMAN BROTHERS. WE ENGAGE TODAY NOT SOLELY OUT OF HISTORICAL INTEREST – ALTHOUGH CERTAINLY IT IS OF INTEREST. THIS SYMPOSIUM IS ABOUT PRACTICAL WAYS TO NAVIGATE THESE UNCHARTED WATERS WHETHER IN BUSINESS LAW PRACTICE, SOLO PRACTICE, SMALL FIRMS, ALTERNATIVE CAREER PATHS OR IMAGING LEGAL CAREERS OF THE FUTURE. TODAY 15 OF THE TOP LEGAL PROFESSIONALS IN CALIFORNIA GATHER TO DISCUSS THESE TOPICS IN THE CONTEXT OF THESE MOMENTOUS EVENTS. TIME IS SHORT SO MY REMARKS WILL BE TOO.

FIRST HEARTFELT THANK YOUS:

· TO OUR USF COMMUNITY:

o THE OFFICES OF DEVELOPMENT AND CAREER PLANNING AND A SPECIAL SHOUT OUT TO GO-TO, DO-IT-ALL ANITA AYERS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OFFICE.

o OUR BOARD OF GOVERNORS, ONE OF THE LAW SCHOOL’S GREATEST ASSETS THAT CREATES AN ALUMNI SUPPORT NETWORK WITHOUT EQUAL. THEY “GOT IT” AND DID EXTRAORDINARY WORK AND EXHIBITED GREAT SPIRIT CONCEIVING THIS DAY AND UNDERSTANDING ITS IMPORTANCE FOR THE LEGAL COMMUNITY AND OUR STUDENTS. I WOULD BE REMISS TO NOT SINGLE OUT ALUMS AND BOARD MEMBERS STACEY MILLER, TOM TROMBADORE AND OUR PROFESSOR HENRY BROWN WHO TOOK THE LABORING OARS.

· THANK YOU TO OUR LEAD SPONSOR WHOSE SUPPORT MAKES THIS DAY POSSIBLE. FOR THOSE OF US AT USF IT IS NO SURPRISE THAT IT IS STACEY MILLER WHO FOUNDED MILLER, SABINO AND LEE INC. LEGAL PLACEMENT SERVICES WHO DEAL DAILY WITH THE FALLOUT FROM THE CRISIS.

· THANK YOU OF COURSE TO OUR PANELISTS.

· AND THANK YOU TO THE MEDIA WHO ARE HERE TODAY. THE MESSAGE MUST BE SENT THAT LAWYERS AND LEGAL EDUCATORS RECOGNIZE THAT BUSINESS AS USUAL IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE; THAT THE CRISIS, AS PAINFUL AS IT IS, HAS US THINKING AMBOUT MORE THAN MAINTAINING – WE KNOW WE MUST LEARN FROM IT AND SEEK TO RETILL THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE IN WAYS THAT BETTER SERVE THE LEGAL COMMUNITY AND THOSE WE ARE SWORN TO SERVE.

AND, PERHAPS, IT IS THIS LAST POINT THAT BEARS THE MOST EMPHASIS. SURELY ECONOMIC POLICIES OF THE PAST ADMINISTRATION AND GREED ON WALL STREET CONTRIBUTED MIGHTILY TO THE NIGHTMARISH MOMENTS OF THIS PAST YEAR AND THE SUFFERING OF THE NEARLY 13% UNEMPUNEMPLOYED IN THIS STATE. BUT WITHIN OUR OWN PROFESSION, WE ALSO BEAR RESPONSIBILITY AS FIRMS OVER EXPANDED AND CREATED ECONOMIC STRUCTURES THAT ULTIMATELY WERE UNSUSTAINABLE -- WHILE, AT THE SAME TIME, THE PUBLIC SECTOR WAS DECIMATED, DENYING LEGAL SERVICES TO THOSE WHO DESPERATELY NEED ACCESS TO JUSTICE.

SO MY HOPE IS THAT AS THE DAY PROGRESSES, WE WILL THINK NOT ONLY ABOUT THE BEST PATHS FOR OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES – A PURSUIT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER – BUT THAT WE WILL ALSO CONSIDER OUR PROFESSION AND THE LESSONS WE HAVE LEARNED.

YOUR PRESENCE AND PARTICIPATION IN THIS SYMPOSIUM, AND THE INCREDIBLE SUPPORT OF OUR STUDENTS BY OUR BOARD OF GOVERNORS IN PRESENTING THIS SEMINAR TODAY, GIVES ME HOPE THAT THE LEGAL PROFESSION, THOUGH BUFFETED BY THE CROSSWINDS OF A STRUGGLING ECONOMY AND FACING AN UNKNOWABLE FUTURE, WILL EMERGE MORE EXCITING, DIVERSE AND IN TUNE WITH THE LIVES OF THOSE OF US WHO CHOOSE TO PRACTICE AND TO PURSUE JUSTICE INTO THE FUTURE.

WELCOME TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO. IN THE SPIRIT OF OUR MISSION OF EDUCATING MINDS AND HEARTS TO CHANGE THE WORLD, I WISH US WELL ON OUR VOYAGE TODAY. WE ALL HAVE A LOT RIDING ON ITS SUCCESS.

Economic Crisis Doesn't Dampen USF Law Student Spirits

2009-08-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's been too long since my last post. School is back in session (Orientation was last week and class for all USF law students got underway this week), and I'm back at it. It turns out that I don't have to go Cambodia and Vietnam to be inspired by our students.

The economic crisis continues despite emerging signs of a slow recovery, and the impact on law students across the country is undeniable. The law job market is suffering terribly (as today's article in the New York Times makes all too evident -- B1, August 25, 2009) and financial stress on students from even moderately rising tuition remains a critically pressing problem. And that backdrop brings me to my thought today.

Students may be under economic stress, but it has not dampened their spirits to do good works and to demonstrate that they intend to make a difference in the world. Two prime examples from USF could not make me more proud: one occurring last May and the other just last Saturday.

Exhibit 1: The 2009 graduating class raised over $100,000 to fund a scholarship for future generations of law students at USF. 100% of the graduating class participated. Talk about keeping their eye on the prize.

Exhibit 2: Last Saturday nearly 125 students from this year's entering class, along with faculty and staff, fanned out all over San Francisco to engage the community, serving meals to the homeless at St. Anthony's Kitchen and at Glide Memorial Church (where the Reverend Cecil Williams holds forth), packing food at the San Francisco Food Bank, and doing environmental work (OK, it was mainly weeding) at Crissy Field. The effort is part of the law school's Law-in-Motion Program that creates volunteer opportunities throughout the school year. Student photos below along with a photo of faculty member Professor Tristin Green who joined the students at Glide.

We talk a lot at the University of San Francisco about Educating Minds and Hearts to Change the World. It's wonderful to have a receptive audience of students who understand that the privilege of studying law carries with it the responsibility to consider ways to interact with marginalized folks to promote a more humane and just world. The response of this year's entering class reminded me of how much students want to do just that and how we, as legal educators, must provide opportunities to quench that thirst.

No question the economic crisis continues to reverberate through legal education and the legal profession, but if the response of our students at USF is any indication, the students' will to see it through and to realize their dreams as lawyers is as strong as ever.

Please also follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/deanbrand

Blogging Post Script: Blog, Blog, Blog or Blah, Blah, Blah?

2009-06-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

Now in Hong Kong and heading home. Two weeks of inspiration (seeing my Cambodian friends who have done so well), frustration (mainly with network connections and technology failing to meet unrealistic expectations and levels of patience), surprises (the intensity of engagement in Hanoi with all sectors), pride (the thoughtfulness and maturity of USF law students in Cambodia and Vietnam), coincidences (being in Hong Kong for the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square and hustling myself sardine-like on the subway with my Twittering, photo-snapping phone to the middle of a candle light demonstration of 150,000 people in Victoria Park), joys (the Central and Russian Markets in Phnom Penh and sipping a gin and tonic at an outdoor bar cooled by a warm evening breeze), amazement (at progress made tempered by hurdles yet to be hurdled), and humility (why is it that we think we know so much when we know so little?)

And through it all I’ve tried to engage through new technologies, blogging and Twittering as best I can from wherever I could. I come away from the experience mixed. These are great (and still developing) tools to communicate and deliver messages about the work we do and the aspirations we have. The technologies create a real (indeed almost surreally real) sense of connectedness to community. They also provide a historical record and reality that is not likely to evaporate into the ether after coming home. And best case, the technology helps you think things through in ways you might not have had you not been putting fingers to keyboard. Diaries and travelogues on steroids, I suppose.

But all that said, it takes time and patience (some times too much of each). And, blog, blog, blog can too easily become blah, blah, blah. Twittering can too easily devolve to nonsensical syllables in a frantic effort to avoid the 140 character limit set by some now-retired twenty five year old who came up with the idea in the first place.

It distracts. I cannot count the number of people at Tiananmen Square, including myself, who were pecking away on phones or hammering out words on laptop keyboards while perched on fences, sitting at fountains or sandwiched between people right in the middle of the demonstration. If the point of travel is to experience, imagine, fantasize, pay attention, relax, and see the world through the eyes of others, then the tweeting and the blogging and the emailing and the texting may not be helping. Right now, I’m in a beautiful lobby of the Shangri-La Hotel with so many interesting people discussing this and that, but I’m staring at my laptop screen. At this particular moment, I might as well be at the French Hotel on Shattuck (oy!)

And this: the access of everyone in the world to our self-styled musings should give us all pause and make one wonder about the line between what’s private and what’s not. For example, I had intended this last blog piece to focus on my love of cities like Phnom Penh and Hanoi, in some ways more than the Paris’ and Londons of the world. That was until I started to think about the answer which involved sometimes sophomoric thoughts about a ‘simpler’ life, experiencing the unknown and unknowable, and other thoughts that I’d prefer not to share with myself let alone the world. (See also: when blog, blog, blog becomes blah, blah, blah.)

All that said, I would and will do again. It’s too much fun imagining who might be reading whatever and who might be having an imaginary coffee or drink with you as digital bytes fly around the world. Thanks for listening. To be continued.

Some "Engaging" Thoughts

2009-06-04T01:42:00.000-07:00

Short vignettes. That’s what these blogs really should be. There is no way to capture every minute or experience. Who would want to? Have keyboards replace imaginations?

I’m thinking about this while I spend three whirlwind days in Hanoi after an overnight stop in Ho Chi Minh City (the site of my last blog entry at the powerful War Remnants museum). And here are two vignettes from Hanoi: One is about why I think we engage the world and the role that a law school like USF can play. The other is about the charm and warmth of cities like Phnom Penh and Hanoi that make them so compelling to me in ways that a Paris and London will never be. My trip is winding down. (I’m in Hong Kong today Thursday for meetings with the Hong Kong City University Law School to continue discussions about student exchanges.) I’ll end with these two vignettes today and tomorrow (when I come home) which explain a lot about why these trips are so important to me.

On Tuesday, I had plenty of experiences to help me understand why engagement is so important and what the law school’s role should be in developing countries. Through a series of serendipitous events I spent virtually the entire day lecturing, discussing, talking, engaging, challenging, being challenged, and working with four very different institutions in Hanoi: the Ho Chi Minh Academy which is the educational arm of the Communist Party; the Vietnam Diplomatic Academy, a new, prestigious law school in Hanoi focusing on degrees in international law; the Ministry of Labor with whom I’ve worked in the past and who invited me back; and, a group called the Young Lawyers of Vietnam, a loose association of recent law graduates, some of whom got their LL.M.s at USF, who are intent on discussing, planning for, and dreaming about the future of Vietnam and the role they can play. It turns out that coincidentally, I spent the day with the past, the present and the future of Vietnam. A few sentences and images about each:

You know you are at a party-affiliated institution the minute that you approach the Ho Chi Minh Academy housed in its French-style, open-courtyard building. How could you not know: there is a statue of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnamese flags to greet you. Once inside, a statuette of Ho sits approvingly in the table-clothed conference room where a sign announces the seminar we are about to begin on Administrative Tribunals in the U.S. and Vietnam. We begin at 8 AM. Present are my good American hosts who have arranged this visit, the Vietnamese lawyers with whom they work, and 50 or so members of the HCM Academy, male and female, seated around the table and in rows of seats along side it. For three hours we talk and talk as the circumscribed topic quickly morphs into ruminations about Guantanamo and abuse of power, about the brilliance of our system if it is working the way it is supposed to, and about why some Vietnamese around the table are concerned about the consequences of some U.S. governmental structures. We talk and talk. I find myself proud of what America can offer and respectful of Vietnam’s efforts to find its own way (certainly different than ours). They too are respectful of our ways in their polite, incisive and smart questions. We applaud each other as the session ends.

In the humid heat (it’s 90 degrees plus), I’ve shed my black sports coat, but my tie remains despite the fact that the Vietnamese men are tie-less in their shirt sleeves which is as much a uniform as the Western coat and tie. We head in a van to the Vietnam Diplomatic Academy. There we meet three women, two Professors and the Dean, each no more than forty and each educated in the West (Tuft’s Fletcher School for two of them). They run this impressive institution which offers international law degrees. I’m the Dean so they want to know about fund raising and sustaining their institution, but more critically they want to create partnerships and programs with us – an idea which intrigues me and which I hope will come to pass in ways similar to the relationships we have had with the Hanoi Law University and the Ho Chi Minh City University Law School. Pictures taken, conversation ended, we head to our next stop – the Ministry of Labor.

In 1998, USF (I and others) did a week long training of labor law judges. So I have visited the Ministry many times before and I am gratified that some remember me and the training. Now we sit around yet another conference table as a small group of lawyers, labor inspectors, directors of training and the like listen as I present an overview of American labor law and relate my own experiences as an Administrative Law Judge hearing disputes between growers and farm workers. They listen and ask question after question – good questions that reflect a sophisticated understanding of what I’ve been saying and an acute interest in improving their own labor processes. Again the photos and the handshakes mingled with a couple of hugs with folks I met more than a decade ago and with whom we now begin to plan future work.

Finally, an evening lecture and dinner with the Young Lawyers of Vietnam who meet informally, but regularly to network and to discuss issues facing them and the future of Vietnam. This is a very different setting. We are jammed into a small conference room. The formality of microphones and translators and table clothes has given way to my standing at the end of a table dodging cables and my own computer that is displaying a primitive power point on the screen behind me, a Diet Coke can holding the cable in place to make sure the image is clear. The topic tonight is legal education and lawyering in the U.S. and Vietnam in the midst of the economic crisis. Again, rapt attention, good questions, challenging retorts as we talk about the role that lawyers may have played in causing the crisis and the role that skilled, ethical courageous lawyering can play in making the future better for everyone.

And from these four experiences, I sense again what I already know – it is critical that the law school engage as we are trying to do. The thoughts are repetitive, complementary, obvious, and surely not original. But there they are, vivid in my head all day long. Here are my Top Five:

1. Engagement breaks down stereotypes: Yes, the HCM Academy is an arm of the CP in Vietnam. But that does not mean that these are not smart folks questioning the way they do things and wanting to make things better. In that sense, they are no different than we are.

2. We learn by engaging: At the HCM Academy I learn how much I admire our system (a fact I sometimes resist as the horrors of an Abhu Graib or Guantanamo unfold). And I learn from the Vietnamese perspective as they fairly critique our system, asking difficult questions about the separation of powers and the possibility of gridlock and as they reflect on judicial precedent in the context of perpetuating bad caselaw as well as good caselaw. The Vietnamese also learn. They learn about our system to better understand their own. The long session proves the obvious: The more you learn about others, the more you understand yourself.

3. We all have common hopes and dreams: As I lecture and speak a theme keeps recurring to these very different audiences. Our systems are very different, I tell them, but I also emphasize that I believe that we all have the same goals: a fair way to administer vast regulatory states (I say at the HCM Academy), a great way to educate students (I say at the Vietnam Diplomatic Academy), justice for workers (I say at the Ministry of Labor), and a desire to lead professional lives that are ethical, useful and balanced to promote our individual well-being and the common good (I tell the Young Lawyers of Vietnam). And this brings into sharp relief another proposition that is almost too obvious to state: if you stay focused on the positives and common dreams you can discuss almost anything as my sessions with the party members, the Dean and professors, the labor inspectors and the young lawyers demonstrate – hard questions emerge in all settings, but the discussion flows energetically and productively because no one is trying to proselytize or judge. Each session ends with all applauding at once – presenters and audience – an act of sincere mutual appreciation.

4. We have no choice: What is clear to me in all of these settings (as my phone sits next to me and I photograph and Twitter and connect instantly) is that engagement is not optional. We are all in this world together in ways we could never have imagined even 15 years ago.

5. Engagement is fun, exciting, adventurous, unknown, and sometimes risky.

We all pick our spots. Serendipity often writes the script. Engagement means different things to different people: a local school or institution? Work on a death penalty case? Work in Guatemala in a small town in need of medical care (as my remarkable young nephew does)? Work in Cambodia or Vietnam? We engage because of the excitement of working with others and the sense that we can make things a little better. We engage perhaps because of naive optimism that somehow we can make a difference. We engage as much for ourselves as for others.

I’ll admit that there are many moments on these trips when I wonder what I’m doing and why I’m in some random place. Tuesday’s lessons learned in Hanoi help me answer those questions. For me, they are lessons that I need to remember

To be continued!

A Visit to the War Remnants Museum – Remnants of the War

2009-05-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

Fifteen years ago I visited what was then called the American War Crimes Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. Its name has been changed to the War Remnants Museum, reflecting improving relations between the United States and Vietnam, and the building has been expanded, but the feelings of overwhelm and sadness remain the same.

The Vietnam War defined my generation and it continues to reverberate in our psyches and in our country. Inside this non-descript three story structure filled with photos and posters and artwork and accessed through a courtyard where captured U.S. tanks and helicopters and fighter planes sit as uneasy reminders of a war that took the lives of too many Vietnamese and Americans, all of the emotions and memories come flooding back: The Vietnamese resisting a foreign army yet again, images of napalm burning the flesh of a child running naked in the middle of the road, American soldiers with little choice, struggling to protect themselves and fighting a misguided war of three Presidents – Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (and Democratic and Republican Congresses alike) and dieing on the battle field as the local news brought us daily body counts of ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. There is Walter Cronkite first in a helicopter wearing a helmet and then coming out against the war. There is Johnson resigning. There are Kissinger and Nixon whose secret plans to end the war bring escalation and Christmas bombings. There is Madame Nhu and Diem and Westmoreland and General Giap and Ho Chi Minh and Tonkin Gulf and Senators-in-opposition Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse. There are the Oakland 7 and the Chicago 7 and troop trains and Canada and flagged draped coffins and draft boards and deferments. There it all is, in your head, as you walk though exhibits depicting destruction in Vietnam, opposition around the world, and art work spawned by war.

On this visit, all I can think about is the death on both sides. American and Vietnamese lives needlessly extinguished. So much has happened since: Vietnam is rebuilt, most of its people were not alive during the war, relations with the Americans have been ‘normalized’, but the war is still there. It will always be there and the War Remnants Museum it turns out is aptly named – the remnants remain.

Cambodia and Vietnam: Forty Minutes by Air and Worlds Apart

2009-05-31T04:41:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to overstate the difference between Cambodia and Vietnam. Cambodia to the Western eye moves slowly and painfully. At dinner the other night Virak Seng, the Director of the Cambodian Legal Education Center which USF proudly started, talked about economic progress, but also commented that we are “still at square one”. Indeed. There may be cranes and construction, but the feel of Cambodia is very much the same as it was fifteen years ago. Even the issues remain the same as the constant struggle to deal with the Khmer Rouge past continues to haunt the country.

Vietnam is only a forty minute flight away, but it is worlds apart. This is a huge powerful nation (population 85 million compared to Cambodia’s 13 million), poised, for better or worse, to enter the WTO with signs of an emerging wealth everywhere: huge high rise construction on the Saigon River and chain hotels (the Hyatt, the Marriott and all the rest), a new international airport, and auto showrooms that feature BMWs. This may only be a surface wealth masking Vietnam’s problems of poverty, repression of human rights and the struggles of its ethnic minorities, but the truth is that the minute you emerge from Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City and head to the hotel, the fate of the Japanese, the French and the Americans in Viet Nam is completely understandable. This is a very beautiful, tough, proud, and capable country.

My Dinner with Visal, Neam, Virak, Chuon, Pheap, Thannah, Kim Sean, Sokry, Kumnith, Sipahn, and Saray (Not a Movie)

2009-05-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

This is way too a long a story to tell on a blog. After all, people have lives to lead rather than blogs to read. So here are a few punch lines:

15 years ago USF began bringing Khmer law students to Cambodia whose legal education was interrupted by the KR horror or whose legal education began in refugee camps on the Thai border around 1989. 20 or more students have come to USF.

Today, virtually all of them are involved in important positions in Cambodia, seeking to rebuild a shattered, maimed country that despite apparent economic progress visible from the back of a motto, continues to suffer the ills of too little education, too few institutional resources (particularly the judiciary), too much corruption and too little money flowing to the right places (perspective: Alex Rogriguez signed a 5 year contract with the Texas Rangers for 262 million dollars. That same year, the entire GNP of Cambodia was 300 million dollars).

Last night we all gathered around a table outside in a Cambodian restaurant run by an NGO under trees pushed by a warm wind, toasting each other over bottles of red wine and Tiger beer (stick with the beer, trust me.)

As we sat around the table and my Cambodian friends thanked us for bringing them together, I could not help but think how gracious and giving they are. The truth is that they have given us at USF the gift of the privilege of peeking into their culture and tragic past. We are the ones that owe thanks.

I also could not help but think about the implications of this scene for legal education and our goals: We are all so focused on our work in the United States and the 'quality' of our students and our 'reputation' -- no doubt we should be. But as we go about our work, we must not lose sight of the good we can do by simply opening our doors, our minds, and our hearts to others with different perspectives, different goals and different ways of life. As I looked at our Cambodian friends, all now lawyers, all doing good work, I kept thinking: who would have ever guessed. Initially, we worried about their English skills, could they handle the work, could they do this or that...the reality is that in many ways they can handle almost anything -- including tragic losses at the hands of the KR -- they just need our resources and the ability to do what they think necessary for their country; not what we think important.

But I digress. Let me go around the table and introduce you:

This is Klawk Chuon, his son, now a law student, is here also. Chuon is the oldest of the students and has been working at the Ministry of Commerce for 15 years. He got his certificate from USF and his law degree in PP at a law school we helped established. We call him Mr. Choun out of light-hearted respect. He hugs me when we see each other.

To Chuon's left is Koy Neam who now works for the Asia foundation after a recent stint with the United Nations Development Program. Neam's education began on the Thai border. Of all of the student/lawyers, he is the "Dean", respected for his knowledge and intelligence (not traits that necessarily go with all Deans.) Neam once described to me and Sue how he was marched out of PP in April 1975, people being shot and tossed in the Ton Le Sap. Neam also asks me to get the IRS off his back. Yes, somehow during his time in the United States they claim he owes them 2,000 dollars. The world is collapsing and our government is going after Neam for 2000 dollars. I tell Neam that I will set the agent straight or at least have fun trying to set him straight.

At the head of the table on my left, is Suon Visal, who is now Secretary General of the Bar. We discuss the number of lawyers in Cambodia, the need for them, and the struggles of those fighting the good fight as corrupt interests constantly try to fire and even imprison them. Visal knows first hand. When with the Cambodia Defender Project, he was almost jailed. The fact he is now Secretary General of the Bar is remarkable. The country now has 626 lawyers, he reports to me. Not enough.

And on Visal's left is Som Sokry. What a story he is. He now lives in Washington D.C. where he has a position with Radio Free Asia (not under U.S. government censorship control he emphasizes.) He is back in Cambodia hosting a radio talk show and covering the Tribunal on the radio.

And there is Run Saray. Another great story. Finally his deteriorating teeth have been fixed (dental care in Cambodia is not a growth industry) and on Monday he begins a new job as Director of Legal Aid of Cambodia. 50 some lawyers all over the country involved in cases ranging from family rights to land rights to criminal defense. He too bemoans the lack of legal infrastructure and the corruption in the Courts. He is concerned about the responsibility of his new job, but excited by the opportunity. I tell him that I wish I could be on his staff.

Next to Saray is Roth Kumnith, the only one at the table in the private sector, working for more than fifteen years for the Bank of Canada. He talks of Cambodia's not suffering during the economic downturn like other countries ("when you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose"? Dylan, B.). He is so warm and affectionate and generous. The meal is ending and I go to pay the bill. He literally grabs me and says 'no'!. I don't argue.

And there is Tuon Sipahn. You'll love this one. We talk about getting sick in Cambodia. He came to the U.S. in 1995 and got typhoid. Go figure! Today he is at the Council of Ministers in a very important position, negotiating foreign agreements around the globe. He just returned from Korea. Sipahn always intrigued me. Warm, soft, quiet, and posture bowed as you speak with him. Is it my romantic naivite? Is he standing taller tonight?

I'll skip Choun's law student son for now. He has already asked for a scholarship to USF. To be continued on that one. :-)

Pen Pheap is at the end of the table. He was part of the first group that came to the US in 1995, along with Neam, Chuon, Tey Sambo (who is not here tonight) and Mam Thannah, seated next to him. Pheap always looked more Western than the others. The same beautiful dark skin (would someone please explain racism to me -- would you rather have Pheap's complexion or mine? It's not close.). Pheap has been involved in various legal projects since he came to USF -- all focused on the rule of law in Cambodia. I ask him how his beautiful wife and children are.

And there is Thannah. Of all of the students, he initially had difficulties adjusting, but has done so much since getting his certificate at USF and his law degree. He is now in charge of document filings at the Tribunal. No small job!

Coming around the table, the two final folks. Not last or least. There is Seng Virak. He is the director of the Cambodian Legal Education Center. He is not technically a USF alum, but we have adopted him. We set the Center up in 1996 and, as I've mentioned elsewhere, it is now entirely Khmer and self-sustaining. He has been a remarkable Director, turning the institution from strictly classroom learning to activist lawyering around the country. The great combination of mind and active heart. He too has been targeted and attacked, but he carries on. He needs more lawyers desperately. His demeanor is so professional, compact, well dressed, the small trimmed moustache giving him a serious authority that somehow works. I am grateful to him tonight for taking the leading oar in bringing all of us together.

And finally, the only woman present tonight -- there were others in the program -- is Kim Sean who remarkably informs me that she is a grandmother. Impossible. She too is doing good work with the East West Foundation that manages many Rule of Law Projects in Cambodia. She is I surmise the CFO of the organization which has budgets in the millions. She is smart, tough and beautiful. She also orders all of the food. 10 courses perhaps?

And those not there: Youk Ngoy who runs the law school RULE and who I visited earlier that afternoon and watched the finals of the their Moot Court competition with hundreds of students present. Also missing is Tey Sambo who worked with UNESCO for years, whose husband is in the foreign service in Paris, and who is rumored to be in Seam Reap at the moment. And others are missed too.

It's now 9:30. I'm exhausted and folks need to get home. A final photo and lifting of the glass: To all of us, our health, our future and our dreams!

To be continued.

Random Thoughts of Change and No Change and Swirling Fans and Geckos

2009-05-28T20:23:00.001-07:00

Today is the last day in Phnom Penh before heading off to Ho Chi Minh City (Saturday and Sunday) and then Hanoi. A whole different world there, but those thoughts will wait.

Today is about seeing old Cambodian friends with whom the law school has worked over the years -- the Dean of a law school in Phnom Penh, Youk Chang at the Cambodian Genocide Project (where the students do a moot court exercise at the end of their class, representing the various sides in the tribunal), a visit to the Center for Community Legal Education which we formed in 1997 and is now entirely Khmer-run and self sustaining, and tonight a dinner with a group of the lawyers that we brought to the law school in the mid-nineties as part of our very first project in Cambodia.

It is hard to imagine more different realities than ours and these folks, but connections and feelings remain so intense. What almost all of them have been through is incredible, some surviving the forced march from Phnom Penh in April 1975 and almost all having lost members of their families to the Khmer Rouge terror.

Yesterday and thoughts of the trip continue to rattle around in my head:

A different Phnom Penh?: There is no question that in the fifteen years since I first came here the city has changed. You notice it when you fly in: the density of the city is striking and the airport an entirely different affair than the small one building structure that was here in the early 90s. Now massive new ministry buildings and even a high rise (20 stories?) are part of the hodge podge architecture that is taking its toll on the once French colonial feel of yellowed low slung buildings. The cyclo pedaled by thin-legged and very strong Cambodian men has given way to a tuk-tuk-type contraption drawn by a motorcyle (moto) -- a definite improvement. Traffic lights now are omnipresent, even with clocks to countdown the seconds to signal the change in lights. In 1994, there was not a traffic light in the city. Bars and neon have replaced many of the buildings, particulalry along the river. The old Le Royal hotel with its circular driveway and easy chairs where drinks were once served long into the night has given way to a beautiful Raffles hotel that has restored the impressive structure. But in many ways nothing has changed: the traffic is as chaotic as ever, a slow moving ballet of sorts with drivers weaving in an out to prove the theorem that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and motos carrying construction materials, whole families, chickens, and fruits. In the end, this remains a city struggling to find its identity following the Vietnam war, following the evacuation of the city in the time of Pol Pot, following the Vietnamese occupation, following the UN occupation during the time of the transitional government, following...you get the point.
A night cap with the students: There is a wonderful bar in this town, the Foreign Correspondent's Club (the FCC) frequented by the ex pat community, many of whom probably spend too much time there. It is an open air building that overlooks the waters of the Ton Le Sap which flows upstream for part of the year (a story in itself.) You enter the bar from the street where a snarl of motos and tuk tuks wait for passengers. The building is a one of those old French colonial ones that now seem to be fading from the landscape. One walks up a wood banistered stair case to the second floor where a bar dominates the middle of the room and tables line the open-air views on to the river. Fans swirl and geckos crawl around the walls and ceilings as folks play pool, sit in easy chairs, view local art on the walls, or just sip drinks looking out over the river. It has that kind of Casablanca feel. When you get to the top of the stair you expect someone to greet you and tell you that Bogie and Bacall are in the corner and want to know why you're late. Needless to say, the students found this joint the first day they were here. So did I last night with them.

To be continued.

Of students, Killing Fields, Toul Sleng and Tribunals

2009-05-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

It's now Thursday. I lost a full day of blogging because of a computer crash. So now in the Business Center in my Phnom Penh Hotel with a day and one half to reflect on our students and visits to Cambodia's Killing Fields, the notorious Toul Sleng Prison (S-21) where at least 15,000 were tortured and murdered, and to the Tribunal where evidence is being taken against Toul Sleng mastermind, Duch, who sits unshackled, tells all and has found Christianity at this late stage in his suddenly repentent life (and God help him!).

I've been in and out of Cambodia so many times, working with others in the late 90s to train would-be judges for a tribunal that never happened then. No matter how many trips, however, I am constantly struck by the power of the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng visits, and this time, watching our five students experience the horrors, the history, the unfathomable is particularly powerful.

The Killing Fields and andToul Sleng sit in stark contrast to one another but are inextricably bound by common policies of a murderous relentless state. The former is on the outskirts of Phnom Penh in a beautiful even serene setting. This is not a Dachau or Teresenstadt with its feel of a city dedicated to murder. Rather, this is a dumping ground for the dead. In 1979, skulls and bones littered the landscape. Today, the Vietnamese-built monument to the dead, with skulls piled 30 feet into the air in a glassed-in pagoda-like building dominates the landscape and is the first shoeless stop one makes to pay homage to the murdered. Once descending the few steps of the shrine, one is still left to wander an almost lush landscape that has changed little since the murderers mercilessly killed their own. Walking the paths, one still encounters bones and clothing peeking through the soil that continues to erode and reveal the ghosts of the dead. ("Do not pick up bones," the signs incredibly remind).

Toul Sleng is in the city, a former three story school whose architecture is typical of school architecture in a hot, humid Southeast Asia -- classrooms, sometimes open to the outside, protected by eaves, and opening to balconies that serve as open-air hallways. But the sounds of children no longer echo in these rooms. Steel beds, chains, photos of the dead kept by the Khmer Rouge, instruments of torture, remarkable photographs of the dead and dying after the Khmer Rouge fled, instruments of torture (water boarding [Mr. Cheney, please visit here!], guillotines) leave sounds of screaming prisoners echoing in one's head -- sounds confirmed by what still appear to be bloodstained floors (or is it just worn tiles?)

We walk through the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng all morning long. Tears on the face of one student. A statement of "overwhelming" from another. A gratifying proclamation by another that there is no way to understand genocide without being at the Killing Fields; and, a poignant scene as two students sit alone amid incense and beautiful foliage, contemplating the unimaginable.

In Toul Sleng, amid the photos of the faces of the dead -- lined up line-up style as in a police station -- one is particularly disturbing. The photo reveals more than most. Down at the woman's waist, is a portion of her child's head poking through the bottom of the photo with the child's arm's reaching in apparent anguish to the mother's forlorn face.

And so it goes...we are all quiet and we get out of our van and the students return to their hotel. And now it is the following day and we are sitting in the tribunal where ironically Duch, whose prison we visited the day before is now on trial. After repeated failed efforts for more than a decade, the tribunal has finally begun and the students are fortunate to be able to witness it. To be sure, it has been mercilessly attacked for many reasons -- corruption, too long delayed, prosecutions that do not dig deep enough down the chain -- but as we sit there one suspects, that while imperfect, Cambodia is trying to deal with its tragic and murderous past perhaps as best it can and in ways which, I remain convinced, no Westerner can fully understand.

The courtroom is a tens of millions of dollar effort, an auditorium style building with seats for 350 or so who view the proceedings through a glass barrier where the stage in this Pirandello-like drama is filled with judges, lawyers, survivors (who sit behind some of the lawyers), translators, and Duch himself, who would blend in as one of the court personnel if one didn't know who he was. Today, Duch is just an observer as the Western expert, in an almost, cold and calculated cadence, recites facts and opinions about the torture, the confessions, and the chain of command. The beautifully robed lawyers aim their voices toward the platform which holds the international and Cambodian judges in their colorful robes flanked by large Cambodian and United Nations' flags on the wall. The sacharrine civility of the lawyers and the judges mask the reality of murder, torture and tragedy which the students experienced just the day before.

But there is no denying what is at stake here. The students get it. We all get it. And at that moment, I can' help but be proud that our students have the oppportunity to experience the responsibility that comes with the privilege of studying law. To be sure, they likely will not be (as most of us have not been) participants in a drama of the magnitude of the trial of those responsible for Pol Pot's and the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. But there is no denying that as they watch the proceedings through glass, the power of the law and what it is capable of doing to tranform lives and society is seeping into their psyches. It surely continues to find its way into my thoughts as I feel lucky and privileged to be there at that moment.

To be continued!

In Phnom Penh

2009-05-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

Jet lagged. In Phnom Penh after traveling for 24 straight hours (SFO – Taipei – Bangkok – Phnom Penh). Now back at the hotel after seeing three of our students at dinner. (The other two were at the hotel finishing up written pieces for the law review.)

I'm tired. So I flip on CNN and live at this moment is President Obama flanked by new Supreme Court nominee Judge Sotomayor and Vice President Biden.

I mention all of this because the seamless transition on our Court, regardless of how one views a particular nominee, stands in sharp contrast to the complete breakdown of the rule of law followed by the horrific genocide in Cambodia from 1975 – 1979. As I think about it, this point was really brought home for me tonight. After dinner, I saw the startling 1979 film by East German filmmakers, Kampuchea: Death and Rebirth, chronicling the horrors of the Khmer Rouge with rare footage and interviews. Seeing the movie and now seeing the President on television drives home how lucky we are and how vigilant we must be to sustain and nurture the rule of law.

Tomorrow we will visit the Killing Fields and the Toul Sleng prison where as many as 15,000 Cambodians were tortured and murdered. In the afternoon, I’ll be at the tribunal where Duch, who ran the prison, is on trial. The students and Howard De Nike and I will go on Thursday. This is an incredible experience for them that I suspect is sure to impact their legal studies and work in the future.

Here is the blog that gives you a good feel for movie which so graphically describes what happened during the time of Pol Pot. By the way, the movie was screened at the Meta House in Phnom Penh that is dedicated to promotion of all sorts of art and media. The top floor of the three story building has a small bar and a pull down screen. Maybe 100 folks were packed in to watch the movie.

A blog from the Phnom Penh Post:

Meta House was full as a tin of sardines last night, as people came out of the woodwork to watch an extraordinary historical documentary film - Kampuchea : Death and Rebirth - by the East German filmmakers Walter Heynowski and Gerhard Scheumann, who were one of the first reporting crews to get access to Cambodia after the expulsion of the Khmer Rouge from power in the spring of 1979. It certainly lived up to its billing of unique and raw footage from a devastated Cambodia. The mesmeric journey through the completely empty streets of Phnom Penh and the interviews with the handful of shell-shocked inhabitants who'd managed to survive the genocide, often by hiding their true identities, was powerful stuff for the time. British audiences had already seen some of the shocking scenes from Cambodia in John Pilger's Year Zero documentary in October 1979 but the Heynowski/Scheumann film featured more interviews and street scenes. It also contained interviews with leading characters such as Pen Sovann, the leader of the new Kampuchean authorities, a youthful student named Khieu Kanharith, who is now the Minister of Information and Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Thirith, who is currently awaiting trial in Phnom Penh for crimes against humanity.

2009-05-25T00:19:00.000-07:00

It's now 12:20 AM on Monday, May 25, 2009. Nearly 14 years since my first trip to Cambodia. In those years, Cambodia has become an important part of my life. I have been blessed to be part of the University of San Francisco's School of Law's involvement in Cambodia efforts to rebuild itself after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror that took the lives of one to two million in four short years through torture, murder and starvation from 1975 to 1979.

The law school's involvement in Cambodia began in 1993 when Professor Dolores Donovan who had worked in the Cambodian refugee camps on the Thai border secured a grant from USAID to bring Cambodians to USF to begin to reengage in their legal studies which had been interrupted during Pol Pot's time. That initial grant led to intense involvement in efforts to promote the rule of law with justice in Cambodia by the law school, including creating an independent law school, a Center for legal education, training teachers, developing curriculum and, during one very eventful summer, training would-be judges who might serve on a tribunal.

Of course, the tribunal did not come to pass in those days, but since has been established and is in session, finally, in Phnom Penh. For years, preceding the tribunal, the law school has taught a course on war crimes during summers in Phnom Penh. This summer is particularly poignant because, for the first time, the tribunal is actually in session.

Now, I'm at SFO about to board a plane for Phnom Penh to join our students and Howard de Nike who has been teaching the course for the past three years. We have arranged to see the tribunal in session as early as Wednesday and Thursday of this week. It will be fascinating to see Duch, who headed the notorious Toul Sleng prison, in the dock.

For those that have followed the tribunal to date, you know that it has been fraught with charges of corruption and claims that few if any of the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Regardless, this must be such an incredible moment for so many Cambodians to finally have a forum that is hearing evidence about the tragedy that was Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge.

One thing I've learned over the years is that it is difficult for any Westerner to truly understand Cambodia and all that has gone on. I feel this acutely because I have not been there is in such a long time -- nearly 6 years. So I'm anxious to listen and learn. I'm anxious to see how my good students react to all that they are about to experience. I'm anxious to try and understand whether the tribunal will be a moment of justice and healing for Cambodia.

To be continued...