On October 21, Fletcher alumnus and Harvard Law Professor David Kennedy delivered the first of the Institute for Human Security’s talks on his new publication, The Dark Side of Virtue.

Kennedy based the book upon his over twenty-five years of experience “in and around the world of international humanitarianism as the occasional and accidental activist, both as observer and participant.” The Dark Side of Virtue calls for a questioning or self-critique of the human rights and humanitarian communities. While in concurrence as to the ideals and purposes of human rights and humanitarian law, Kennedy argues that the humanitarian community needs to take responsibility for its actions and the possible repercussions from its growing power.

There should be an “urge for greater attention to the unrecognized costs of well-meaning ventures,” Kennedy said. “Human rights voices are increasingly powerful . . . often providing terms through which global power is not only devised but also exercised.” He used recent examples of government resource allocation to programs such as court reform or justice education—rather than granting funds to building dam projects—to illustrate that the human rights and humanitarianism voices are stronger and should heed their own strength. In other words, the community needs “to be responsible in global governance, take responsibility for the cost as well as benefits for its work, and be more pragmatic of what it does.”

Centered on the concept of “Humanitarian Pragmatism,” Kennedy’s mantra asks for frank dialogue between, among, and with those in the human rights and humanitarian communities to properly assess their real effects on policy, both positive and negative. Take, for example, the term “refugee.” Kennedy claims that by classifying the term, the community has excluded far more than those actually found within the rubric of the term.

Human rights, by claiming “to know what justice means, always and everywhere,” may be crowding out other forms of social justice. “Deciding what is normal and not normal is ruler-ship,” that needs to be examined both in the foreground and the background.

When asked by a student as to whether it is the law itself that is an obstacle or the humanitarian community, Kennedy responded that the law was not necessarily the impediment, but rather the impediment was the inability of the community to put the “background” noise of the human rights world on center stage to be analyzed and critiqued.

Professionally, Professor David Kennedy is the Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches human rights law, European Union law, and law and development. Professor Kennedy received his MALD and Ph.D. degrees from The Fletcher School and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. Of all his academic experiences, Kennedy states, “More than 25 years ago I was studying for my MALD, which was by far the most enjoyable year of any institution that I’ve studied anywhere.”

Article by Susan Shin, MALD '05