Editorial Staff

Human Rights Advocate Kristina Arriaga on Cuba, Religious Liberty, & Cancel Culture

/in , , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

This week on “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talk with Kristina Arriaga, president of Intrinsic, a strategic communications firm, and former vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Kristina shares her family’s experiences fleeing Castro’s communist regime in Cuba and other hardships, and how her background has shaped her commitment to religious liberty. They discuss the current political situation in Cuba, and the lessons American citizens, teachers, and students should learn about communism’s impact on human rights. She shares her work to advance religious freedom as former executive director of The Becket Fund, where she honored courageous Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares and so many other human rights activists, and through her service on several noted international commissions. Finally, they discuss parallels Kristina highlighted in an October 2020 USA Today op-ed, between cancel culture in America and some of the features of communist Cuba, such as speech codes, political correctness, and social shaming. They delve into why cancel culture is so dangerous to the free exchange of ideas and a healthy civic life, and how parents, teachers, and professors can combat it.

Stories of the Week: The Biden administration is extending the moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest – originally scheduled to expire next month – through early 2022. But exactly who is eligible? The New York Times reports that 340,000 of the one million children who did not report for school during the pandemic were in kindergarten, with the sharpest declines in low-income neighborhoods.

Guest:

Kristina Arriaga is a passionate communicator with a storied life — from orchestrating the rescue of a Cuban woman and her two children, for which she was featured in Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest, to visiting American Pastor Andrew Brunson in prison in Turkey, attending his judicial hearings in Izmir, and advocating for his release both in Turkey and through the pages of The Wall Street Journal. She is particularly interested in free speech, freedom of religion or belief, and international human rights for girls and women, and has written extensively on all these issues. Her recent USA Today piece on cancel culture went viral and was then censored for sensitive content by Twitter. In 2016, the U.S. Congress appointed her to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, where she was elected Vice-Chair for two consecutive terms. During her 3-year tenure, she met with high-ranking government officials to advocate for human rights in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Nigeria, Turkey, and many other countries. Before the Commission, Arriaga was a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission and the executive director of The Becket Fund, a public interest law firm that defends free expression. During her tenure at the law firm, she oversaw several landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Arriaga is the recipient of the 2017 Newseum Free Expression Award. Other recipients that year were Apple CEO Tim Cook, ABC correspondent Martha Raddatz, and civil rights champion John Lewis. Arriaga is a sought-after speaker and has appeared on BBC, MSNBC, C-Span, CNN, and NPR. Her writing includes op-eds published in USA Today and The Hill, and she has lectured at numerous academic institutions. Kristina has a master’s degree from Georgetown University and is reading for her DPhil at the Oxford Law Faculty at Oxford University.

The next episode will air on Wednesday, August 18th, 2021 at 12 pm ET with guest, Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, and acclaimed author of the books, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and How to Educate a Citizen: The Power of Shared Knowledge to Unify a Nation.

Tweet of the Week:

News Links:

Student Loan Payment Suspension: What the Extension Means for Borrowers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/student-loan-payment-suspension-what-the-extension-means-for-borrowers-11628594394?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1

NYT: The Kindergarten Exodus

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/07/us/covid-kindergarten-enrollment.html?smid=tw-share

 

Get new episodes of The Learning Curve in your inbox!

Recent Episodes:

Donald Graham on The Washington Post, Media, and Educating Immigrants

This week on The Learning Curve, Donald Graham, Chairman of Graham Holdings Company, discusses the history of The Washington Post, his views on changing media in America, and his work in higher education reform and philanthropy on behalf of immigrant youth.

Columbia Law’s Philip Hamburger on Church, State, & School Choice

This week on The Learning Curve, noted constitutional law professor Philip Hamburger of Columbia Law School discusses the legal basis for private and religious school choice, and how American constitutionalism supports parental choice in education.

AEI’s Dr. Diana Schaub on the Founders, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, & Civics

This week on The Learning Curve, Loyola University Maryland professor and AEI senior fellow Dr. Diana Schaub explores the legacies, speeches, and writings of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, and how knowledge of U.S. history and primary sources can debunk revisionist approaches to teaching history and civics.

Morehouse’s Prof. Marisela Martinez-Cola on Pre-Brown Cases for Educational Equality

This week on The Learning Curve, Morehouse College's Dr. Marisela Martinez-Cola, JD, discusses her book The Bricks before Brown: The Chinese American, Native American, and Mexican Americans' Struggle for Educational Equality, and the long struggle for equal opportunity in American education.

Marquette’s Dr. Howard Fuller on School Choice, Charter Schools, and Race

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Howard Fuller, Founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University, discusses education reform, school choice, charter public schools, race, and the ongoing struggle to provide educational opportunity to all children in America.

Columbia’s Pulitzer Winner Prof. Eric Foner on Lincoln, Slavery, & Reconstruction

This week on The Learning Curve, guest cohosts Charlie Chieppo and Alisha Searcy speak with Dr. Eric Foner, Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University and Pulitzer Prize-winning author on Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Fmr. Mississippi Chief Dr. Carey Wright on State Leadership & NAEP Gains

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Carey Wright, former Mississippi state superintendent of education, discusses the dramatic improvements in fourth graders' reading scores in Mississippi during her time there, the importance of early childhood education and literacy programs, the role of literature and art, and the inspiration educators can draw from Mississippi's heroes in the Civil Rights Movement.

U-Hong Kong Prof. Frank Dikötter on China: Mao’s Tyranny to Rising Superpower

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Frank Dikötter discusses Chairman Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist revolution, the Great Leap Forward, China's economic ascent under Deng Xiaoping, and the realities that the U.S. and the West must understand as they seek to engage with China as a rising superpower.

Prof. Lorraine Pangle on the Founders, Education, and Civics

This week on The Learning Curve, Lorraine Pangle, professor of political philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses how the Founding Fathers' grounding in classical and Enlightenment thought helped shape America's Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the role of public education as a wellspring of republican self-government.

U.K.’s Robert McCrum on P.G. Wodehouse, ‘Jeeves & Wooster,’ and April Fools’ Day

In this special April Fools' Day edition of The Learning Curve, British writer and editor Robert McCrum, discusses English comic genius P.G. Wodehouse, his inimitable prose style, and much-needed humor he brought to 1920s and '30s Britain in the wake of World War I and the 1918 flu epidemic.