Advertise on podcast: Hardwired: On the Frontlines of Freedom

In this conversation, Hardwired Founder and President, Tina Ramirez, and high school educator, Zeina Dbouk, discuss the ways Zeina’s father stood up to corruption in Lebanon, which inspired her to continue his legacy through teaching students. They discuss the ways Zeina facilitates dialogue in her classroom by making space to respectfully engage across differences. They also explore the Hardwired Global teaching strategies Zeina uses in her classroom to engage students in a process of diffusing fears to achieve a pluralism mindset. Lastly, they remember Zeina’s attendance to the Hardwired Global education conference in Morocco for ministers of education in the Middle East and North Africa and they explain the exciting programming Zeina is managing for teachers in Lebanon and Iraq.  Zeina Dbouk is a teacher and curriculum developer at a private school in Lebanon. She is a survivor of violence in Lebanon and through teaching her students, she aspires to make Lebanon a place where everyone thrives. Hardwired Global has recently partnered with her to expand our teacher training program in the Middle East.  Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: youtu.be/jOChpEbClfk Support the show

Mr. Conde is a prolific author and lecturer in the U.S. and Europe who has defended countless refugees and individuals persecuted for their faith in his private law practice. In our interview, he shares how he first came face to face with the cost of freedom when he traveled behind the Iron Curtain to meet with Christians who didn’t even have a right to own their own Bible, something we can easily take for granted in a free country.  Every summer, Mr. Conde joins the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France to teach a legal course in French and English on human rights terminology.  At a time when social discourse has reduced human rights to human wants, and often forgotten the legal foundation for its existence, his work is essential.  Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: youtu.be/pvJTG1wP8yA Professor Victor “Skip” Conde is a professor of international and comparative human rights and humanitarian law at Trinity Law School and a visiting lecturer in human rights at the University of California at Irvine, and lecturer at the Faculté de Droit, University of Strasbourg, France, and the International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg. He has published widely on international and domestic human rights law, policy and practice. He is the author of A Handbook of International Human Rights Terminology, which is a much-needed tool that provides access to the developing language of human rights and aids in full comprehension of human rights theory and issues. He is also the co-author of Human Rights and the United States, a U.S. focused comprehensive reference book to help Americans understand U.S. human rights history and laws. Support the show

Mohaned’s story symbolizes the struggle many Sudanese Muslims experienced while living under the brutal rule of Sudan’s former dictator, Omar al Bashir.  Mohaned describes the rampant discrimination and injustice he witnessed firsthand under the Bashir government, which imposed their strict interpretation of Islam on the people through radical laws that restricted every freedom – especially religious freedom.  The religious laws even included punishment for wearing “indecent clothes” and he describes how several young Christian girls were routinely beaten in the streets for wearing jeans, while hundreds of Christians were routinely forced to renounce their faith or face apostasy charges each year. While Muslims like himself and many others were affected by the radical laws imposed on everyone, he shares how he was able to use his legal practice to defend women and Christians who experienced the most persecution.   Mohaned was determined to use his education and status to turn the tide and embed religious freedom and human rights for all Sudanese in the country.  By 2012, Mohaned had taken hundreds of cases defending Christians and challenging Omar al-Bashir’s brutal regime. As one of only a few human rights lawyers at the time who worked at the highest courts in Sudan, he “filled a gap” to help hundreds of victims during an aggressive, violent campaign against Christians. Remarkably, Mohaned was able to build trust between Christian and Muslim lawyers to mobilize a large, united team to defend their rights throughout the country. In this interview you'll hear how Hardwired and Mohaned worked together to defend Meriam Ibrahim, a pregnant mother who was sentenced to death for apostasy on Mother’s Day in 2014. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/rsauSmQ8gjI Support the show

“Every single country that’s a threat to peace, is a threat to their own people. Without exception.”   Our next guest, Suzanne Scholte, gave North Korean defectors a voice in the U.S. Congress. Suzanne has been standing on the frontlines of freedom for nearly three decades, taking on the North Korea regime, which is perhaps the world’s most oppressive government and worst violator of human rights. Early in her career, Suzanne was inspired by her faith to help protect the people of North Korea and alleviate their suffering. During our conversation, Suzanne shares how she channeled this calling in many ways, including through her work building the North Korea Freedom Coalition and Free North Korea Radio, which brought attention back to the brutal dictators of North Korea and exposed more North Korean people to the freedom they should have from learning more about the outside world. Suzanne brought North Korean defectors before Congress to testify for the very first time in 1996. She shares a few of the hundreds of stories of starvation, trafficking and oppression she’s heard over the years. In honor of the upcoming 19th Annual North Korean Freedom Week, we hope your hearts are inspired by the heartbreaking truths of this interview. Suzanne also shares a glimpse into her other work with the people of Western Sahara, the Sahrawi's, which inhabit one of the longest permanent refugee settlements in the world. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/6ElE_u09Ee4 Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

In this latest On the Frontlines of Freedom series, we share an interview with Dr. de Jong, a fromer Member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Government who went on to successfully found and build the first working group on Freedom of Religion or Belief in the Parliament. For over 20 years, de Jong’s personal beliefs and faith has been a driving force for his dedication, research and work in protecting freedom of religion or belief at the government level.  What makes his work so unique is that he was leading these efforts within the European Parliament as a member of the Socialist Party.  During our interview with him, de Jong lets us in on his strategy and approach as he tactfully gained broad support of other MEP’s and foreign diplomats, from “both sides of the aisle”.  Dr. de Jong served in several Dutch Ministries, until elected to the European Parliament in 2009 and 2014 as his party’s top candidate. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/JY5XLIC-Buo  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

As a secular country with the largest Muslim population in the world, Dr. Alissa Wahid works to honor the nation’s 1928 pledge that the country is united on grounds of religious diversity and freedom for all – a unique model among predominately Muslim countries that has inspired robust conversations worldwide. Mrs. Alissa Wahid is a trained family psychologist, but is most recognized for her work in the social sector on multiculturalism, democracy and human rights and moderate Muslim movements in Indonesia. Her father, Abdurrahman Wahid, affectionately known as Gus Dur, was the fourth president of Indonesia from 1999-2001. Gus Dur’s most enduring political legacy is a modern moderate Islam in Indonesia, one in which faith is deeply personal and not directed by the state. Mrs. Wahid is carrying on that legacy as the national director of the Gusdurian Network Indonesia (GNI). GNI hosts thousands of grassroots-level activists in more than 100 cities in Indonesia, working to promote interfaith dialogue and understanding, active citizenship, democracy and human rights. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/Xk3SLcsZ4u0  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

In this next conversation with Tatiana Moon, daughter of the founder of the Unification Church, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, she opens up about the public misunderstandings of the Church, and shares her father’s vision of reuniting North Korea with South Korea, including details of his meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung in 1991, in which he boldly criticized the regime before its leaders. We close the conversation with discussing the perceptions of President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-Un. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: youtu.be/ahcRPRxglPY Tatiana Moon often served as her father’s spokesman when he was alive. Her father, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of the World Christianity, which is commonly called the Unification Church. Rev. Moon taught that world peace will only come when we bridge divides across racial discrimination. Now Tatiana is the Chair and President of Kirov Academy, a Washington, D.C.-based ballet academy with close ties to the Unification Church, which emphasizes the arts as an expression of God’s gifts and a channel for unification of all peoples.  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

In this conversation with Dr. Felisa Tibbitts, co-founder of Human Rights Education Associates, we discuss the importance of teaching children and communities about their human rights.  As a fellow global expert on human rights education, Dr. Tibbitts, was deeply influenced at a young age by major historical moments that brought the need for human rights to the forefront of global crisis – from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Civil Rights Movement in her own backyard.  Over the course of her career, she has used education to encourage schools, communities, and policymakers to recognize the value of teaching people their rights in some of the most challenging places. Listen to the full interview to learn the interesting ways in which Felisa has applied education to change the trajectory of communities all around the world. We conclude by discussing how the COVID-19 pandemic has raised many issues in the field of human rights. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/t4rantXRvSg Dr. Felisa Tibbitts is a global expert in the field of human rights education. She co-founded and directs the NGO Human Rights Education Associates, which supports youth, women and members of vulnerable groups in learning about their human rights through education, training, and capacity-building activities. HREA also encourages governments, government officials, and local authorities to fulfill their human rights obligations. Dr. Tibbitts is also the Chair in Human Rights Education in the Department of Law, Economics and Governance at Utrecht University and a Lecturer in the International Education Development Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

In this conversation, Tina Ramirez, Hardwired Global founder, and president, and Angela Wu Howard, a distinguished international human rights lawyer, discuss the dangers of government overreach and its impact on the freedom of religion for people of all faiths and none. They remember their teamwork at the United Nations rallying nations to vote down defamation of religion resolutions, which covertly protected harmful blasphemy laws, especially in Muslim-majority countries. They remember their work advocating for Dalits in India—those treated as the lowest caste of India society—who suffered extreme violence due to their religion and poverty. Angela outlines key fundamental religious freedom laws in the U.S., the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, to provide context for landmark United States Supreme Court cases involving the violation of the freedom of conscience as it concerned the rights of prisoners, employment rights, healthcare services, and public health in a pandemic.  Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/cL7TEpk-tCs Angela Wu Howard is a leading international human rights lawyer. She is the International Law Fellow at the Becket Institute, a public interest law firm that defends religious liberty cases. She has testified, lectured, and worked on religious freedom cases before United Nations tribunals, the U.S. Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the domestic courts in countries around the world. She established the academic project Becket Institute at Oxford University in 2010 where she researched legal philosophy applied to religious freedom. Angela obtained a J.D., cum laude from Harvard Law School and a DPhil in legal philosophy from Oxford University. She was litigating hostile corporate takeovers and political asylum cases with Clearly Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York when Becket recruited her to join its team. Angela speaks English fluently and French, Mandarin Chinese, and Taiwanese to varying degrees of competency. She enjoys dictionaries and design.  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

In this conversation, Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C, Naomi Kikoler, discusses the role of the Museum as the conscience of our country, designed to not only help Americans remember the Holocaust, but to be a resource for Congress in the prevention of future atrocities. Naomi outlines the strategies the Museum uses to communicate early warning signs of potential genocide, and then discusses what the Museum has done to draw attention to the atrocities suffered by the Yazidi community in Iraq who faced genocide under the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.  Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: bit.ly/KikolerInterviewYouTube Naomi Kikoler is the Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.  Naomi is a leading expert and strategist on mass atrocity prevention and international human rights advocacy and human rights law. Naomi’s own family members were victimized in the Holocaust. In this conversation, she shares that as she advocated for genocide prevention, she avoided work about the memory of the Holocaust because it felt too close to home. After some persuasion, she eventually accepted the role at the United States Holocaust Museum. Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

The last two years have exposed the lack of understanding many officials have about America’s first amendment protection of the freedom of religion.  Under the threat of the coronavirus pandemic, many states passed laws that prevented public – and at times even private – worship.  For one of the most fundamental aspects of American liberty to be so challenged during a time of national crisis raises serious questions about the strength of religious liberty in America today. In on honor of National Religious Freedom Day this Sunday, 1/16, Eric Treene, the former Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination at the United States Department of Justice, joins us to share how he fought for this fundamental freedom throughout the pandemic, and for many years prior.  Eric’s unique role at the DOJ made him an important voice of reason at a time when religious liberty was under threat. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: youtu.be/u7a4R6tOh5c Eric Treene is Senior Counsel at Storzer and Associates in Washington, D.C., and an Instructor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Vienna, Virginia.  He served for 19 years in four administrations in the U.S. Department of Justice as Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination.  He provided leadership for the Department on a wide range of religious liberty issues, including developing and overseeing the Department’s enforcement program for the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA); testifying before the U.S. Senate on religious hate crimes and developing training programs for local law enforcement and religious community leaders on protecting places of worship; and leading the Department’s efforts on protecting religious liberty rights during the COVID-19 epidemic.  Mr. Treene represented the United States in a range of Free Exercise and RLUIPA cases in U.S. District Courts, various U.S. Courts of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court. Prior to serving at the Department of Justice, Mr. Treene was Litigation Director at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., and is a former law clerk to the Hon. John M. Walker, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.  He is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School. He is a member of the bars of New York and Washington, D.C., and is a member of the bars of various federal District and Appeals courts, and the United States Supreme Court.  He is the author of a number of articles and book chapters on religious liberty issues.  He has lectured widely in law schools and universities in the U.S. as well as Spain and Malaysia on religious liberty. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination https://www.justice.gov/crt/combating-religious-discrimination-and-protecting-religious-freedom-19 Religious Practice and Social Distancing https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-william-p-barr-issues-statement-religious-practice-and-social-44:39 -0 House of Worship Safety, Department of Homeland Security Office of Faith Based & Community Partnerships https://www.cisa.gov/faith-based-organizations-houses-worship Islamic Center of Murfreesboro vs. Rutherford County https://www.becketlaw.org/case/islamic-center-murfreesboro-v-rutherford-county/  Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)

“And that was a moment that I’ll never forget. So many people had been living in the political prison for years in very inhuman conditions. The smell, the filthiness, there was no sun.” This interview is with Zainab Al-Suwaij, the co-founder and Executive Director of the American Islamic Congress, whose courageous advocacy for human rights began at a very early age.   As the granddaughter of a leading Shi’a religious leader, Zainab had a frontline view of the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.   In this conversation Zainab describes the atrocities inflicted on Hussein’s opponents and the climate of fear they felt in and outside of the prisons.  During the 1992 uprising against Hussein, she was one of the few females who dared to stand up to the dictator. As a Muslim woman, she has courageously trained and mobilized young people in the Middle East, many of whom joined movements like the Arab Spring and the Egyptian revolution and helped bring an end to other long-standing dictatorships.  Zainab continues today to teach the concept of freedom, democracy, and human rights to youth, including on college campuses across the U.S. Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: youtu.be/ZJ31WJwD3g4  Zainab Al-Suwaij is a co-founder of the American Islamic Congress (AIC) and has been its Executive Director since its inception in 2001. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, Zainab left her teaching position at Yale to launch AIC with the mission of building interfaith and interethnic understanding and to represent the diversity of American Muslim life. Zainab’s leadership has expanded AIC into an international organization with six bureaus worldwide, including the U.S., Egypt, Iraq, and newest location, Tunisia.  Her vision for acceptance and understanding in the U.S. is being realized through AIC’s growing campus initiative, Project Nur, as well as its Interfaith Councils and groundbreaking Witness Series. Zainab is an outspoken advocate for women’s equality, civil rights, and interfaith understanding. Support the show (https://bit.ly/donateHW)