March 17, 2006
Ph.D. Research Profile - Bonnie Brennan
A budding interest in the feminist movement as an undergraduate at the University of Utah combined with the unlikely encouragement of an extraordinary Mormon Bishop sparked Bonnie Brennan’s passion for human rights, and eventually led to her career in law. After earning two Bachelor of Arts degrees (philosophy and political science) from the University of Utah, where she wrote an honors thesis comparing the role of women in the Soviet Union to the role of women in the Mormon Church, Brennan began her MALD at The Fletcher School at the ripe old age of 19.Brennan worked briefly in the book publishing industry while completing her MALD on the Soviet theory of self-determination. She moved onto law school at New York University, where she subsequently earned a fellowship in human rights. For her fellowship Brennan wrote a paper on the definition of “minority” for purposes of implementing Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. That article was the first minority rights provision in a U.N. human rights instrument.
Currently seeking a publisher for her dissertation, Brennan is also researching indigenous rights (a subgroup of minority rights) for her next book. However, she also appreciates the broader implications of her work in minority rights.
“The ultimate point of writing a dissertation on human rights is to influence the development of international human rights norms,” said Brennan. “At this early stage, that may sound arrogant, but if any school can provide one with the credentials to do it, I would like to believe that it is Fletcher.”
The broad conceptual focus of her dissertation is on the development of minority rights within the United Nations human rights system. Her interest in becoming a professor of international law motivated her to return to Fletcher for her Ph.D.
“Fletcher was the first school of its kind,” said Brennan. “It has a great public international law department, which was at the core of its curriculum when it was first founded. I could not imagine a better place to get a Ph.D. in light of what I hoped to do.”
The title of her dissertation is “The Fate of Minorities: The United Nations Endeavor to Create a Minority Protection Regime.” In it she reviews the history of minority rights within the U.N. from its inception to the present day. Her research helps to establish why it has been such a long and difficult road.
“My research demonstrates that even small steps should not be underestimated in their importance, especially when so many states have been so resistant to the establishment of a universal minority protection regime,” Brennan said.
Through her work she has come to realize how very political the work of the U.N. is. Her younger and “more idealistic” self thought that people involved in negotiating human rights would be more serious about protecting the interests of individuals, including those individuals that resided in their own countries.
“I soon saw that human rights within the U.N., particularly during the Cold War, were merely tools of propaganda,” said Brennan. “What I thought was particularly perturbing was the tendency of states to promote themselves as advocates of human rights, when in fact it was their goal to seize the process and prevent the implementation of the norms they claimed to support.”
However, Brennan does think that this self-serving behavior has a positive aspect as well. “The upside is that states don’t like to be embarrassed by their hypocrisy. As the process of developing human rights norms goes forward, opposing states expose the infirmities of each other’s domestic policies. States feel compelled to change as a result.” Brennan notes that although the change has not been rapid, it has nonetheless occurred. She does not put her faith entirely in the human rights instruments that are generated by the U.N. Rather, she relies on the negotiating process to make the difference.
Although her dissertation is primarily historical and not theoretical, she does delve into the theories of Will Kymlicka. Kymlicka argued that minority rights are not inherently inconsistent with liberal theory. Brennan feels strongly that minority rights represent a convergence between individual and group interests.
“In a poly-ethnic world, it is impossible to deny the existence of ethnic groups whether one wishes to view them as organic entities or mere aggregates of individuals,” said Brennan. “What is certainly true is that individuals may make contributions to culture, but they cannot produce it alone. Moreover, individuals rely upon their culture’s ethical norms to guide them in decision making throughout life. To forcibly part individuals from their culture is inconsistent with the basic values of liberal democracy.”
Brennan has spent the last 15 years working for The Legal Aid Society of New York as an appellate lawyer working to preserve criminal due process, which she sees as a critical human right. She is currently seeking a teaching position either in a law school or in a graduate school of international relations. Her goal is to continue producing an influential body of literature in defense of human rights. She also plans to remain involved in NGO consulting, as well as litigation on behalf of deserving clients whose rights have been violated.
By Ben Micheel, MALD '07
Posted by jessica at March 17, 2006 12:17 PM
