Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on October 31, 2025 to attend this event in-person.
Please join the Harriman Institute and Human Rights Watch for a panel discussion with Alexander Cooley, Rachel Denber, Tatyana Margolin (STROIKA), Nate Schenkkan (Independent Human Rights Expert) and Jack Snyder.
In their advocacy and research work, human rights organizations understandably focus on making impact, broadly conceived, and articulating a “theory of change” to show how we get to that impact. Yet, in the increasingly closed political spaces of Eurasia where authoritarians now operate with a well-worn and hardened set of practices to stigmatize, counteract and monitor advocacy campaigns, it is not clear just how “impact” can be achieved. In this hybrid seminar, Rachel Denber and other expert practitioners will reflect upon how the shrinking space for human rights advocacy challenges us to rethink the definition of “impact,” the renewed importance of research and documentation, and what types of interventions are possible from outside of countries where research and advocacy organizations have been banned and/or exiled.
