Faculty To Meet with South Africa's Desmond Tutu, Truth Commission

Several Harvard faculty members will be flying to South Africa at the end of this month to meet with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Harvard group, along with colleagues from India, Israel, and American universities and law schools, is studying the role of truth commissions in preventing conflict in divided societies as part of a multiyear project sponsored by the World Peace Foundation.

Dennis Thompson, associate provost and director of the Program in Ethics and the Professions, and Robert I. Rotberg of the Harvard Institute for International Development and president of the World Peace Foundation are leading the group. Also participating are Professor Charles Maier, director of the Center for European Studies, and Law School professors Martha Minow and David Wilkins. They are being joined, in part, by Professor Amy Gutmann of Princeton University, Professor Kent Greenawalt of Columbia Law School, Professor Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas Law School, Professor David Crocker of the University of Maryland, Professor Elizabeth Kiss of Duke University, and Professor Ron Slye of Seattle University School of Law. Each participant has contributed a chapter to Truth v. Justice: The Efficacy of Truth Commissions, which Thompson and Rotberg are editing.

Members of South Africa's Truth Commission are writing their final report. One of the critical purposes of the Cape Town meeting between the non-South Africans and the members and staff of the Truth Commission is to assist the Commission's evaluation of its three-year efforts. To this end, the meeting in South Africa will include joint presentations and extensive debate and discussion. Presentation subjects include The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions; The Societal and Conflictual Conditions that are Necessary or Conducive to Truth Commissions; Trauma and Catharsis: The Psychology of Testimony; Due Process in the Pursuit of Truth: Procedural Issues; The Commission Report: History? Advocacy? Or a Verdict?; and Lessons for the World: The Uses of Truth Commissions.