Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants. Justice Louis Brandeis
2014 Achievements The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Brandeis University
Celebrating
years of watchdog reporting
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Watchdog Reporting: Local, National, Global. www.brandeis.edu/investigate @SchusterInst t 781.736.4953 f 781.736.5030 schusterinstitute@brandeis.edu Brandeis University 415 South Street, MS 043 Waltham, MA 02454-9110
ON THE COVER Andy Warhol Louis Brandeis, 1980 From Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century Screenprint on museum board 40 x 32 inches Š Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York Courtesy Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA; Gift of Sondra and Melvin Homer, Miami, Florida
Š 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Celebrating
years of watchdog reporting
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University
“
Journalism and a free press are among the most important human institutions of the modern world. Democracy, civil society, and free markets cannot exist over time without them.” – Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University The Columbia University Record (2003)
The institutions of the press we have inherited are the result of a mixed system of public and private cooperation. Trusting the market alone to provide all the news coverage we need would mean venturing into the unknown—a risky proposition with a vital public institution hanging in the balance.” – Lee Bollinger, in The Wall Street Journal (2010)
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At Schuster, I’ve been challenged. Challenged in my preconceptions, and challenged to make a difference. Working here has helped me to think more critically about the world, to look beyond what is readily accepted and find the real story.” – Jonathan Muchin, Brandeis Class of 2011, pursuing a master’s degree in public policy
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Supporting investigative journalism is one of the most rewarding philanthropic investments we have ever made. Without the Institute’s focus on exposing violations of human rights and abuses of government power, so many of the important stories listed in this report would have stayed hidden. But there’s so much more to bring to light. And together we can help change the world, one injustice at a time.” – Elaine and Gerald Schuster, founding benefactors
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
CONTENTS 3 4 5 6 7 9
2004 – 2014: The Schuster Institute’s Tenth Anniversary Our Impact Journalism Model Innovative Newsroom Without Walls New Laws IMPACT – Governmental and Corporate Policy Changes: Local, National, Global Impact Journalism Case Study: Human Trafficking & Palm Oil
11 The Founding Director: The Power of Journalism 12 2014 Highlights 14 Schuster Institute Reporting Projects 14 The Justice Brandeis Law Project Investigating Wrongful Convictions 17 The Modern-Day Slavery & Human Trafficking Reporting Project The Business of Slavery 20 The Gender & Justice Reporting Project Fraud & Corruption in International Adoption 21 The Race & Justice Reporting Project Remembering Boston’s Forced Busing, 40 Years Later 23 The Economic Inequality Reporting Project 24 The Global Inequality Reporting Project The Legacy of Unexploded American Bombs in Laos Death & Danger at the U.S.-Mexico Border Waging War & Peace 27 Ethics & Justice Investigative Reporting Fellowships 27 New Senior Fellows 29 Senior Fellows 32 More 2014 Work by Our Fellows Food & Justice Health & Justice New Books and Major Articles 37 2014 Awards & Honors 38 Mentoring Students 39 In Students’ Own Words 41 Special Events for the Brandeis Community 43
Past Special Events
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Special thanks to our Advisory Board
© 2015 SCHUSTER INSTITUTE FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 2 of 44
Celebrating
years of watchdog reporting
2004 – 2014
THE SCHUSTER INSTITUTE FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM A Decade of Independent, High-impact Journalism at Brandeis University We are delighted to be celebrating the tenth year of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. The Institute was founded when longtime investigative journalist and editor Florence Graves realized that the business model for investigative reporting was collapsing. As one of the first “new nonprofit” independent journalism centers, the Institute is dedicated to the reporting essential for a healthy democracy. Here we gather experienced, driven, and highly entrepreneurial journalists who investigate, report, analyze, and comment on unreported and underreported social justice and human rights issues. We devote the time and resources necessary to produce nuanced, credible, and sustained coverage of a variety of human rights and social justice issues, devoting particular attention to those affecting the “Statue of Liberty” populations: those who are poor, immigrants, powerless, voiceless, imprisoned, or forgotten.
Our impact journalism strategy. As a small and ambitious outpost, the Schuster
Institute stays focused on journalism that can make a difference, investing only in little-known but potentially major stories. To break out of the media echo chamber, we take our findings public using an “impact journalism” strategy aimed at two primary targets: the concerned public, whom we reach via mass media; and policymakers, corporate executives, regulators, and others who need to know exactly how their decisions are affecting our shared world, reached via “thought-leader” and policy outlets. Because only a fraction of our research is cited in any individual article, we build targeted websites that host the in-depth resources that inform our findings, including documents received under the Freedom of Information Act, academic and NGO studies, relevant statistics, related news reports, original essays, and other material that brings our findings to life, such as compelling graphics, photography, maps, and videos. We do this, as you will see in this report, through dedicated reporting projects; through our interactive, multimedia website; through our innovative fellowship program, which we call a “newsroom without walls”; and through mentoring paid student researchers. Learning by doing, the students experience the importance and power of painstaking research and careful documentation of every allegation and fact, developing into thoughtful citizens and leaders.
JUSTICE THROUGH IMPACT JOURNALISM HOW WE DO IT Travel
In person, by phone, Internet or email
8
Gathering information & images • Interviewing sources • Requesting & reviewing public records & corporate documents • Conducting extensive online research • Attending meetings & public hearings • Fact-checking • Authenticating documents • Reviewing credibility of our sources Writing & editing articles, captions, infographics, audio & video files
Partnering with media outlets to reach the largest or most targeted audiences; offering original & curated content on our website Getting the story out to the public & stakeholders via social media networks, blogs, & targeted advocacy groups
Schuster Institute staff and senior fellows bring decades of reporting experience to their work in our innovative newsroom without walls. Their backgrounds range from anthropology to microbiology. Their work spurs change, informs and refocuses the national conversation, and garners awards.
Deep investigations cost a lot of money. It takes a strong financial commmitment to take on stories that may span continents and months or years. Without help from our funding partners, we could not tackle the stories other media organizations can’t or won’t do.
Ever mindful of Justice Brandeis’s famous words, “Sunlight is the best of disinfectants,” our team of staff, fellows, and students devotes hours, days, and months in our deepdive investigations. We have the support of a university committed to “truth even unto its innermost parts” and the pursuit of justice. The university offers a rich trove of research resources, consulting professors, and visiting scholars.
our innovative newsroom without walls 19 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS reporting on social justice issues have been selected as senior fellows by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. Located in the United States and around the globe, these dedicated reporters are part of the Institute’s ongoing community newsroom where – either in person or virtually – they exchange advice, support, and insight from each other and from Institute staff. INSTITUTE STAFF investigate projects under the guidance of veteran reporter Florence Graves, founding director. Senior Fellow Phillip Martin discusses story ideas with student researchers Karrah Beck, Alyson 25–30 BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Eller, Noah Litwer, and Sela Brown at the Schuster Institute. Martin won the 2014 Edward STUDENTS passionate about social justice R. Murrow award for investigative reporting for his eight-part series, “Underground Trade: From are hired each year to work as researchers Boston to Bangkok.” Broadcast by WGBH Boston Public Radio in cooperation with the Schuster Institute and the International Center for Journalists, the series maps the modern slave trade from to support staff and fellows’ investigative East Asia to New York to New England, investigates the demand side of human trafficking, and reporting projects. Students’ majors range explores efforts to stop it. from international global studies to history, politics to psychology, French to philosophy. Some minor in journalism or legal studies. TOGETHER, this highly motivated team comprises our “newsroom without walls.”
Our “newsroom without walls” work extends all over the world, including the fishing waters of New Zealand to the borderlands of the United States and Mexico to the rainforests of Indonesia. Schuster Institute investigations have covered stories on every continent and in all regions of the United States.
OUR IMPACT JOURNALISM In just one decade, our small organization has had tremendous impact through focused effort, dogged investigation, and the determination to ensure that our findings reach the right audiences and lead to change. Here
LOCAL
NATIONAL
are some examples.
NEW LAWS
The Universal Accreditation Act of 2012, spurred by our multi-year reporting on fraud and corruption in international adoption, put into place one of our proposed solutions: required accreditation for every person or agency involved in arranging international adoptions.
In 2014 New Zealand’s parliament banned foreign-flagged vessels from fishing in its waters, effectively prohibiting a form of slavery documented in our 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek article, “The Fishing Industry’s Cruelest Catch.”
Dennis Maher, incarcerated in Massachusetts for 19 years, was exonerated in 2003 through DNA testing only after his trial judge who refused testing retired. In 2011, 48 states had DNA testing laws that freed the innocent. Why didn’t Massachusetts? Photo by photojournalist Erik Jacobs
GLOBAL
Massachusetts Law 278A, Post-Conviction Access to Forensic and Scientific Analysis, passed soon after the Schuster Institute published its 2011 “Failing the DNA Test” Boston Globe Magazine cover story.
L O C A L
CORPORATE
GOVERNMENTAL
N AT I O N A L
G L O B A L
Housing the homeless. In 2007, The Boston Globe Magazine published our article “First Things First,” about new approaches to ending homelessness – and the Massachusetts government’s failures to take action on its “Housing First” initiative. Within one month, Gov. Deval Patrick appointed a new staff director for the homelessness commission; the state budget doubled the amount of funds dedicated to Housing First; and the commission met at long last, after 18 months of inaction.
LOCAL NATIONAL NATIONAL
POLICY CHANGES
B
Unsafe aircraft? In 2006, The Washington Post published our collaborative investigation into whistleblower allegations about dangerous lapses in Boeing production and oversight – right on the front page, above the fold. Nine years later, Boeing is still embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with the three whistleblowers – all former Boeing employees – who say questionable parts ended up in hundreds of Boeing 737s. Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration maintain that the 737s are safe to fly; the whistleblowers’ experts say that has not yet been fully established. But however the lawsuit is resolved, at least one central problem remains. As we wrote in the Post, documents and interviews about the dispute “exposed gaps in the way government regulators investigated the alleged problems in aircraft
Teens sexually harassed in the workplace. Few teens know what to do when a supervisor begins to talk ceaselessly and intimately about their bodies and lives, discussing sex acts in detail, propositioning mercilessly, and groping, grabbing, stalking, threatening, or sexually assaulting them. Our 2007 groundbreaking Good Housekeeping investigation “Is Your Daughter Safe at Work” put this underreported issue on the map and became an episode on PBS’s public affairs show NOW, hosted by Maria Hinojosa, reaching millions of readers and viewers. Follow-up articles rippled across the nation. The show tracked the legal journeys to justice of several young women, and examined how the issue affects teenagers across the country—many of whom don’t know how to report workplace abuse, or even how to recognize when their bosses cross the line.
POLICY CHANGES CORPORATE
GOVERNMENTAL
NATIONAL
N AT I O N A L
G L O B A L
Food safety. In her investigative article “Why Your Food Isn’t Safe,” Senior Fellow Madeline Drexler teamed up with Good Housekeeping magazine to investigate and carefully detail serious lapses and failures in U.S. food safety policies and practices. Drexler pointed to specific actions government agencies should take to reduce the frequency and severity of serious – sometimes deadly – foodborne illness outbreaks, and offered steps consumers could take to protect themselves from potentially contaminated foods bought in grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and restaurants. Just days after the article was published, the United States Department of Agriculture announced it would extend the ban on E. coli in ground beef to include six other toxic strains, and the Food and Drug Administration declared that it would establish a foodborne illness outbreak response network.
GLOBAL
L O C A L
Slavery in your shopping cart. Since the publication of our 2013 Bloomberg Businessweek article documenting slavery in the production of palm oil, the percentage of globally traded palm oil from suppliers committed to ending “human rights abuses across their supply chains” rose from just 5 percent to 95 percent, according to Green Century Capital Management: “We were able to present a strong case to companies for making these commitments, because the investigative reporting from the Schuster Institute that appeared in Bloomberg really heightened public awareness about controversies in the palm oil supply chain, and the reputational risk to companies who use the ingredient.”
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES MORGAN
WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THESE ISSUES AND OUR WORK? Visit http://www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org/ and follow us on Twitter @SchusterInst
Watch this 5-minute video
http://bit.ly/aboutSchusterInstitute
IMPACT JOURNALISM CASE STUDY: HUMAN TRAFFICKING & PALM OIL In 2012 The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism begins to look for untold stories about modern-day slavery that connect to U.S. consumers. Our coverage illustrates the plight of workers in Indonesia, the top producer of the world’s palm oil supply and a country identified by the U.S. Department of Labor as having major problems with slavery and child labor. Palm oil is the world’s most widely-used vegetable oil and an ingredient in everyday items from toothpaste to cookies. Our team uncovers the links in the slavery supply chain leading from faraway plantations to U.S. supermarkets.
6 9 months
INVESTIGATING, VERIFYING, WRITING
Reporting from Indonesia, Malaysia, China, United States Lead reporter E. Benjamin Skinner and a team of 6 reporters and editors follow the intra-country migration of workers in the palm oil industry in Indonesia. Additional reporting is done by journalists in Indonesia who wish to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, and by 30 student researchers at Brandeis University. $$
ADAM’S STORY
He is forced to work as a laborer at a palm oil plantation in Berau
“Adam” is recruited from Nias, his hometown, to drive trucks
The story highlights one man’s journey from freedom to slavery and back, and how few consumers around the world, including in China and India’s growing markets, are aware of the workers’ plight. This map shows “Adam’s” 2,000-mile forced migration.
PUBLISHING Partner: Bloomberg Businessweek •Circulation 980,000 weekly in 150 countries • July 2013 • Print magazine and online
$$
$$
INDONESIA
Published on our website: back-up documentation, source material, links, slideshows, letters, industry documents, lists of everyday products containing palm oil, and related articles on human rights abuses. Industry responses were added after the article was published.
DISSEMINATING • We push the story out via social media and through our networks and those of our senior fellows. • A number of advocacy groups, including Rainforest Action Network, pick it up. • We hire a social media firm to target special audiences. • Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweet about the story. In just four days, these efforts touched over 30 million Twitter users.
RESULTS
Industry changes. Major corporations named in the article such as Unilever, Cargill, Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and Kellogg, which use palm oil to make everyday products, commit to slavery-free supply chains. Green Century Capital Management uses the reporting to explain the facts to investors. PERCENTAGE OF GLOBALLY TRADED PALM OIL FROM SUPPLIERS COMMITTED TO ROOTING OUT SLAVERY IN THEIR SUPPLY CHAINS Before 2013 investigation published in Bloomberg Businessweek: 5%
Source: Green Century Capital Management
By 2015: 95%
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
Some of the many places you’ve seen us:
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10TH ANNIVERSARY
SCHUSTER INSTITUTE FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM FOUNDING DIRECTOR FLORENCE GRAVES In his book about the urgent need for investigative journalism, longtime investigative journalist, news entrepreneur, and MacArthur Award winner Charles Lewis discusses what inspired Florence Graves, Bill Kovach, and Daniel Schorr – whom he calls “three of the best” – to pursue innovative approaches to journalism. As Lewis notes, Graves decided that investigative journalism was for her at a very early age. Those formative years still drive her pursuit of the truth today, as she describes in her own words:
“...even as a kid, I could see that there were things that needed to be changed in the world. And journalism was a way to bring truth to the people, or a form of the truth.” – Florence Graves, quoted in 935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity, Charles Lewis (Public Affairs, 2014).
“
I remember being horrified and profoundly moved by the civil rights struggles and the blatant discrimination I saw daily growing up in Texas and on television in the 60s. And it was very difficult for me to reconcile what I saw with what I was being taught in church and in school. It became obvious to me that there was a huge disconnect between what many people said and what they seemed to actually believe and to do. But I was just a kid. What could I do? I began to ask questions – persistently. No one ever gave me answers that made any sense to me. It began to sink in that people often gave different versions of ‘the truth’: the official story and the real story. About the same time, I began reading the biographies of 20th century pioneering journalists Nellie Bly and Ida Tarbell, who were able to use their outrage over injustices to dig deeply, to get beyond those “official versions,” and to publish stories that would shine a light and lead to changes in society. There was a ‘click’ in my mind as I realized the connection between their difficult but powerful work and the injustices I was seeing every day. I remember thinking that journalism was a way to bring the truth about wrongdoing into the open. ‘That’s what I want to do when I grow up,’ I recall thinking. And as I grew older, I began to see even more clearly the power of journalism – the power to inform, to educate, to enlighten, to change minds. And I began to see that when people do change their minds – especially when large groups of people begin to change their minds – the world begins to change, too.”
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2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
2014 Achievements
Our 2014 highlights include: Justice Brandeis Law Project BREAKTHROUGHS! 8
Breakthroughs in three of our four wrongful convictions investigations:
• DNA testing ordered in Steve’s case, after 21 years in prison. • Evidentiary hearing in Angel’s case — potentially opening the door to a new trial, after 21 years in prison.
• Evidentiary hearing scheduled in George’s case — after 30 years in prison for a rape the victim repeatedly said George did not commit.
Gender & Justice Project NEW FEDERAL LAW!8
• Prompted by our multi-year, multi-platform investigation into fraud and corruption in international adoption, Congress passed one of our recommended solutions:Universal Accreditation Act of 2012, which went into effect July 14, 2014. The Senate bill was offered by then-Sen. John Kerry, and the House bill was sponsored by Rep. Albio Sires. • “They Steal Babies, Don’t They?” Nov. 24, 2014, Pacific Standard Magazine, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow E.J. Graff. The article analyzes hundreds of pages of U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa documents received in response to Freedom of Information Act requests about American adoptions from Ethiopia. • On our website we published all these documents (emails, memos, cables, reports, and so on) acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, along with responses and comments we invited from every U.S. adoption agency mentioned within them.
PUBLISHED! 8
• “The Limits of Jurisdiction,” Dec. 1, 2014, Guernica Magazine, Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre. The article investigates in meticulous detail the shocking story of a Guatemalan mother horrified to discover that her kidnapped daughter had been adopted by a U.S. couple.
PUBLISHED! 8
• “Anita Hill’s Legacy,” April 7, 2014, The Boston Globe, Founding Director Florence Graves and Senior Fellow E.J. Graff. The commentary reports on how much change in sexual harassment policy and practice cascaded from now-Brandeis professor Anita Hill’s testimony — and how fully that testimony has since been vindicated. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 12 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
Modern-Day Slavery & Human Trafficking Project • “A Necessary Hero,” Winter 2014, Brandeis Magazine, Schuster Institute Managing Editor Claire Pavlik Purgus.
PUBLISHED!
• Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Investigative Series for Senior Fellow Phillip
AWARD!
• Clarion Award for our article, “Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry Rife with Human Rights
AWARD!
Martin’s eight-part radio WGBH broadcast “Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok,” produced in partnership with the Schuster Institute. Abuses,” July 22, 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek, Senior Fellow E. Benjamin Skinner.
The Race & Justice Project • Schuster Institute-Brandeis University-WGBH News Partnership, “Remembering
Boston’s Forced Busing 40 Years Later,” including radio and television broadcasts, webcasts, and online publications.
YEAR-LONG MULTIMEDIA RELEASE!
The Global Inequality Reporting Project • Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press), Schuster Institute Senior Fellows Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern. Supported by a Schuster Institute microsite, this book examines how hundreds of thousands of unexploded American bombs, dropped 40 years ago, continue to maim, kill, and devastate Laotians.
PUBLISHED!
AWARD!
• National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for Senior Fellow James
Verini’s “Love and Ruin,” Feb. 25, 2014, The Atavist, about a love affair between two unusual characters amidst years of war in Kabul, Afghanistan.
• George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting for Senior Fellow James Verini’s
“Should the United Nations Wage War to Keep Peace?” March 27, 2014, National Geographic, investigating UN intervention in the decades-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
For details, please continue reading this report.
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AWARD!
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
SCHUSTER INSTITUTE REPORTING PROJECTS Investigative reporting can be the fastest route to reforming human rights and social justice violations. Meticulous, long-term investigation of individual stories that represent larger systemic abuses and injustices can help expose those injustices to public view, prompting effective action. The Schuster Institute has a number of dedicated reporting projects, each of which bears fruit in different years. This year we saw exciting results in several projects:
The Justice Brandeis Law Project The Justice Brandeis Law Project (JBLP) uses investigative journalism methods to examine possible miscarriages of criminal justice, including likely wrongful convictions, official misbehavior, and misuse of government power. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants...” – Justice Louis Brandeis
The Wrongful Conviction Project We are painstakingly investigating the cases of two people convicted of first-degree murder in Massachusetts (life in prison, no parole), one convicted of rape in Massachusetts (life in prison, no parole), and one convicted of arson-murder in New Jersey (life in prison, no parole). In each case, our investigations found strong evidence that they had likely been wrongfully convicted—but no other innocence project was willing or able to take on the case. Unlike many innocence projects, the Justice Brandeis Law Project takes on especially difficult cases in which exoneration does not hinge primarily on DNA evidence. Experienced reporters are supported by volunteers and an enthusiastic, smart, and
“
When the Schuster team came in, it was as if you were pulling the nails out of my coffin, one by one.” – Steve, Massachusetts inmate
Steve’s family and Schuster Institute staff and student researchers, after a Massachusetts judge granted Steve an evidentiary hearing in Suffolk County Superior Court. From L-R: Aaron Bray, Brandeis ’13 (now at Harvard Law School), Joanna Nix ’14, Steve’s son Stephen Jr., Schuster Institute Founding Director Florence Graves, Steve’s mother, Liz Eckley ’10, Elly Kalfus ’12, Schuster Institute senior reporter Anne Driscoll.
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10TH ANNIVERSARY
dedicated team of Brandeis undergraduate students in reviewing documents, finding and interviewing witnesses, and working across language barriers. As we reach major milestones, we will write and publish articles about these cases. Steve’s case Steve has been imprisoned for more than 20 years for a murder he has always said he did not commit. Our meticulous investigation found new, compelling evidence to support Steve’s claims of innocence. Thanks to that and a newly passed law* that gives inmates the right to seek DNA testing, in November 2014 Steve was back in court. The judge ordered DNA testing for some previously untested crime scene evidence, which is now underway. Before the Justice Brandeis Law Project team took Steve’s case, eight different attorneys had argued his case through two trials, various appeals, and all the way to a habeas petition. No attorney had ever thoroughly investigated his case to look for alternate suspects, as we have successfully done. Nor had any attorney suggested testing crime scene evidence for DNA that could potentially exonerate Steve. Angel’s case Angel has been in prison for more than 20 years for a murder that, from day one, he has insisted he did not commit, refusing to accept a plea deal. Our team uncovered inconsistencies and problems with the testimony from the Commonwealth’s primary eyewitness, a heavy drug user who could not understand time or distances; an additional witness never questioned by police; and what is called “Brady” (exculpatory) information, records of alternate suspects that the police and prosecution never revealed.
BREAKTHROUGH! STEVE’S CASE: DNA TESTING ORDERED! * DNA testing was ordered in December 2014 under Massachusetts law 278A, “Post-Conviction Access to Forensic and Scientific Analysis.” That law passed after the Schuster Institute’s 2011 “Failing the DNA Test” cover story was published in the Boston Globe Magazine.
BREAKTHROUGH! ANGEL’S CASE: EVIDENTIARY HEARING ORDERED!
Based on our evidence, five years after a motion for a new trial was filed in court, the judge in Angel’s case has ordered an “evidentiary hearing.” This December, Angel’s attorney presented evidence showing why Angel should have a new trial. This is the single greatest chance for freedom and justice Angel has had. Several experienced attorneys believe that if Angel is granted a new trial, the prosecution could very well decline to re-try him – and he will be freed! Our investigation of Angel’s case has led us to believe that this miscarriage of justice included eyewitness misidentification, police and prosecutorial misconduct, and sloppy investigative practices. George’s case In 2011, the Justice Brandeis Law Project began examining George’s case. He has been in prison for nearly 30 years for a rape which he has always claimed he did not commit—
Angel’s family and Schuster Institute staff and student researchers pose outside the courthouse after Angel’s hearing in Essex Superior Court in May. Angel’s daughter (fourth from the right) was an infant when her father was convicted. This hearing was the first time they had seen each other in person and was the first time that any of Angel’s family had seen him since his incarceration in 1994. From L-R: Megan Kerrigan, Brandeis ’14; Elly Kalfus ’12; Angel’s cousin; Florence Graves; Angel’s aunt; Angel’s daughter; Angel’s cousin; Cecilie Gramada ’15; and Angel’s close friend.
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2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
and which the victim stated, repeatedly, George did not perpetrate. In 2013, the FBI selected to review George’s case as one of thousands of cases in which a person was convicted (and in some cases put to death) based on FBI “expert testimony” in microscopic hair comparison analysis. In 2014, the FBI concluded that its agent, testifying in George’s trial as an expert forensic hair analyst, had made unsubstantiated statements linking a single hair to George. In a landmark 2009 report, The National Academy of Sciences concluded the practice was “highly unreliable” and that “hair sample analyses cannot be linked to one person.” George’s latest motion for a new trial was filed in July and is currently under review by a Massachusetts judge. Maria’s Case Maria’s case is another the Justice Brandeis Law Project began reviewing in 2014. Nearly 20 years ago in New Jersey, Maria was convicted of murder by arson, which she has always said was an accident. Since her conviction, the National Academy of Sciences has found many of the “rules of thumb” of arson science “not to be true,” according to its 2009 report. Dozens of convictions nationwide that were once labeled arson have since been found to be accidental fires and overturned. Justice Brandeis Law Project is working on a comprehensive investigation of Maria’s case with a goal of publishing a major article in the coming year.
The Prosecutor Accountability Project The Schuster Institute staff along with Harvard-trained lawyer and legal policy analyst Elizabeth Prasse are investigating how prosecutors make decisions with little or no oversight or review. Her research is taking her deep into quantitative and qualitative data about when and whether District Attorney (DA) elections are contested and when and whether a state’s Board of Bar Overseers takes action against a prosecutor. This year, the Project has been focusing on Massachusetts, with the intention of eventually extending its research template to additional states. We will publish the report and the underlying evidence.
The Irish Innocence Project: Anne Driscoll, Schuster Institute Senior Reporter Schuster Institute Senior Reporter Anne Driscoll is on leave in Dublin for a second year, where she is working with the Irish Innocence Project, sponsored by Griffith College’s law school. For the 2013-2014 academic year, Driscoll was there as a Fulbright Fellow, implementing the Schuster Institute Justice Brandeis Law Project model of investigating likely cases of innocence. She is teaching students, including journalism students, to investigate potential wrongful convictions. After Driscoll’s first year on fellowship, Griffith College hired her as project manager.
• The Irish Innocence Project will be hosting the 2015 European Network Conference on
Friday, June 26, followed by the first-ever International Wrongful Conviction Film Festival on Saturday, June 27, which was conceived and organized by Driscoll.
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10TH ANNIVERSARY
The Modern-Day Slavery & Human Trafficking Reporting Project More people are enslaved today than at any other point in human history, according to Kevin Bales, sociologist and author of The Slave Next Door and Disposable People. The ModernDay Slavery & Human Trafficking Reporting Project’s mission is to report accurately and thoroughly on the contemporary realities, practices, and perceptions of this crime.
“
Over 95 percent of globally traded palm oil now comes from suppliers who have committed to end widespread deforestation and human rights abuses across their supply chains, up from just 5 percent two years ago.” – Lucia von Reusner, Shareholder Advocate, Green Century Capital Management, March 4, 2015
The Business Of Slavery We are especially pleased about our “Business of Slavery” project, which exposes how products that are caught, harvested, or manufactured by slave laborers wind up in Western shopping carts. We assemble and train cross-border teams of journalists to document cases of slavery throughout the world; trace the supply chains of slave-made products to American and European companies and consumers; and publicize our findings in major news outlets. Ongoing Impact! “Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses,” July 18, 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek. Corporations that announced or strengthened commitments to buying only palm oil free of forced and child labor and human trafficking since the story’s publication: Cargill, Colgate-Palmolive, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, The Kellogg Company, Mondelez International, Procter & Gamble, Safeway, J.M. Smucker, and Unilever. • Green Century Capital Management, a socially responsible investor, used this article’s findings to persuade corporations to audit their palm oil supply chains. • Before our article was published, only 5 percent of globally traded palm oil came from “suppliers who have committed to end widespread deforestation and human rights abuses within their supply chains.” Today that number is 95 percent, according to Lucia von Reusner of Green Century Capital Management.
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CLARION & GEORGE POLK AWARDS!
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
“The Fishing Industry’s Cruelest Catch,” Feb. 20, 2012, Bloomberg Businesweek.
• The New Zealand government tightened regulation and oversight of its fishing waters (2012)
• Wal-Mart, Safeway, High Liner, and other implicated companies launched investigations into their fish suppliers’ labor practices (2012)
• The CEO of New Zealand’s largest publicly held fishing company, named in our investigation, admitted wrongdoing and resigned (2013)
NEW LAW! 8
• New Zealand’s parliament amended its laws to ban foreign-flagged vessels from
fishing in its waters, effectively prohibiting the form of slavery that we found (2014)
PUBLISHED! 8
“A Necessary Hero,” Winter 2014, Brandeis Magazine. Our story traced the work of a Brandeis University Heller School alumnus and Vietnamese attorney, Van Ta, who rescues women and children from forced prostitution and labor in garment factories. Weeks later, Secretary of State John Kerry honored Van Ta by naming him a 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report Hero. Brandeis Magazine also featured the Schuster Institute’s investigative reporting project on human trafficking and modern-day slavery.
“
A Necessary Hero” is the story about people working together – from Boston to Vietnam and China – to rectify the injustices done to victims of human trafficking. “A Necessary Hero” Claire Pavlik Purgus and Susan Piland, Feb. 18, 2014, Brandeis Magazine
AWARD! 8
Children as young as ten are trafficked to work in garment factories in Vietnam. Photo: Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation
“Human Trafficking From Boston to Bangkok,” WGBH News in partnership with the Schuster Institute, Senior Fellow Phillip Martin. Reporter Phillip Martin, WGBH
News, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and the International Center for Journalists received a 2014 Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Investigative Series for WGBH Radio's eight-part radio broadcast "Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok." The Institute hosts a multimedia microsite to back up those findings.
SPEAKING! 8
UNESCO/University of Connecticut event: Human Trafficking, Forced Labor, and Exploitation. Founding Director Florence Graves and Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre
spoke as part of this conference of international experts, scholars, officials, researchers, advocates, and survivors. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 18 of 44
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MORE HUMAN TRAFFICKING REPORTING by our Senior Fellows:
“Report: New England Industries ‘Ripe’ For Human Trafficking” Senior Fellow Phillip Martin Oct. 23, 2014, WGBH Radio
“Prostitution Arrests: Worcester And Lynn Spotlight The Gender Gap” Senior Fellow Phillip Martin Oct. 6, 2014, WGBH Radio
“American Implicated in Congo Child-Smuggling Ring” Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre Sept. 19, 2014, Fusion
“Two Roxbury Men Convicted of Human Trafficking” Senior Fellow Phillip Martin Feb. 10, 2014, WGBH Radio
“Blood on Our Backs” Senior Fellow Karen Coates Jan. 11, 2014, Al Jazeera America
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2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
THE GENDER & JUSTICE REPORTING PROJECT Fraud & Corruption in International Adoption BREAKTHROUGH! 8 NEW LAW GOES INTO EFFECT!
PUBLISHED! 8
In our story “They Steal Babies, Don’t They?” and on our associated website, we showed that Ethiopia was a textbook example of why the new Universal Accreditation Act law was so desperately needed—giving documentation so policymakers could fend off those who want to weaken those protections.
Since 2008, the Schuster Institute has been exposing problems in international adoption and pointing to potential solutions. Intra-congressional discussions among high-level stakeholders and staffers, which stakeholders say were prompted by our work, led to passage of the Universal Accreditation Act of 2012 (UAA). When that law went into effect on July 14, 2014, it put into place one of our proposed solutions: accreditation required for every agency arranging international adoptions.
“They Steal Babies, Don’t They?” Pacific Standard Magazine, Nov. 24, 2014 Senior Fellow E.J. Graff Four years after we submitted Freedom of Information Act requests, the Schuster Institute received hundreds of pages of documents from the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, detailing troubles in adoption from Ethiopia. Graff analyzed these documents and told the story of how humanitarian adoptions metastasized into a mini-industry shot through with fraud, becoming a source of income for unscrupulous orphanages, government officials, and shady operators—and was then reined back in through diplomacy, regulation, and a brand-new federal law. On our website, we published all those never-before-seen documents. To offer a fuller picture, we invited every U.S adoption agency named in these documents to submit a response that might clarify, correct, or comment on anything mentioned regarding their agency. We published these responses as well.
“The Limits of Jurisdiction,” Guernica Magazine, Dec. 1, 2014 Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre McIntyre spent years reporting on an alleged kidnapping of a little girl from her Guatemalan family, after which she was adopted out to Americans in Missouri. In 2011, a Guatemalan court ordered that the adoptive family return the child to her birthmother in Guatemala, who had been searching for her for years. The family and the U.S. have not complied. McIntyre’s investigation vividly illuminates the fraud and corruption in the international adoption system between Guatemala and the U.S. A mother from Guatemala displays a family photo that includes her daughter, kidnapped six years ago, who may be living in Missouri with a U.S. couple. Photo by Erin Siegal McIntyre
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“Anita Hill’s Legacy,” April 7, 2014 The Boston Globe, Founding Director Florence Graves and Senior Fellow E.J. Graff When the 2014 documentary Anita was released, Graves and Graff reported on how much change in sexual harassment policy and practice cascaded from now-Brandeis professor Anita Hill’s testimony — and how fully that testimony has since been vindicated. Note: In an exclusive Anita screening for Brandeis alumni, Florence Graves moderated a discussion with Professor Hill.
THE RACE & JUSTICE REPORTING PROJECT Remembering Boston’s Forced Busing, 40 Years Later
YEAR-LONG MULTIMEDIA RELEASE!
Schuster Institute-Brandeis University-WGBH News Partnership On the 40th anniversary of the highly controversial and sometimes violent implementation of busing in Boston, WGBH News and the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism kicked off a partnership to examine the promise and failure of school desegregation in two cities. The first: the violent and racially fueled resistance to court-ordered busing in Boston. The second: the virtual abandonment of financing for public education in Jackson, Mississippi, following busing. When Boston exploded with riots over busing, much of the national news media portrayed the city as deeply racist, a reputation that still clings to it 40 years later. But archival research and individual memories reveal that, even at the time, busing was never quite so simple. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism is pleased to partner with WGBH News to offer a more nuanced and complicated account.
INTEGRATION: Thirty-One Essays on School Year 1974-75
The Schuster Institute-WGBH News series so far: • “Not So Black & White: Busing in Boston,” a Schuster Institute microsite of resources for this 40-year anniversary. • Thirty-one Boston sixth-graders’ newly rediscovered 1974-1975 essays about their experiences with integration during Boston’s first year of integration through forced busing, on our website and on the WGBH News home page. • “Whatever Happened to the Sixth Graders Who Wrote Essays about Busing?” Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Phillip Martin, Sept. 30, 2014, WGBH News. • “Dorchester Students’ Essays Echo Boston’s Busing Crisis, 40 Years Later,” Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Phillip Martin, Sept. 30, 2014, WGBH News. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 21 of 44
SPECIAL SITE CREATED! PUBLISHED!
BROADCAST!
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
“
I had already lost too many older siblings to Whitey’s [drug] trade to go that route and become another casualty. I suppose that’s why I am still alive.”
From “Whitey Bulger, Forced Busing, and Southie’s Lost Generation,” Schuster Institute Senior Contributing Editor Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of New York Times bestseller All Souls.
• Webcast on WGBH News of today’s sixth-graders reading those essays aloud. • Senior Fellow Phillip Martin interviewed Schuster Senior Contributing Editor Michael Patrick MacDonald on a walk through Southie to reflect on the tragedies of busing, Dec. 17, 2014, WGBH News. • “Busing Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Whitey Bulger,” by Schuster Senior Contributing Editor Michael Patrick MacDonald, author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (Beacon Press, 1999, 2010). This searing essay was commissioned for and published on our website, “Remembering Boston Busing 40 Years Later.” In it, MacDonald examines South Boston’s lost generation of young people who dropped out of high school in busing’s wake and were recruited into Whitey’s web of addicts and criminals, where they were profoundly damaged. After this original essay went viral, it was republished on WGBH News’s website.
THIS REPORTING PARTNERSHIP GROWS FROM ANOTHER PARTNERSHIP, WITHIN BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY. The Schuster Institute worked with Brandeis
Sociology Professor David Cunningham and his students in the Sociology Department’s Justice Brandeis Summer 2014 Semester. Cunningham, author of Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights Era Ku Klux Klan, is an expert in the 20th century history of desegregation and civil rights. The class traveled to Mississippi to research the parallels, differences, and ongoing effects of forced busing for racial integration in two very different cities: Boston, Massachusetts and Jackson, Mississippi.
Highlights have included: • Professor David Cunningham unearthed the 31 forgotten sixth-graders’ essays from Mayor Kevin White’s unprocessed papers, which we brought to WGBH News.
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• Senior Fellow Maria Stenzel, an award-winning photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, and Schuster Institute Associate Editor Neena Pathak traveled with Cunningham and students to Jackson, Mississippi, and recorded (in both audio and video) their historic interviews with Jackson residents about the busing era and its legacy. Many of these interviews captured historically significant facts, recollections, and insights about desegregation, which Cunningham and the Schuster Institute are culling and curating for our website.
And don’t miss: • “You Want a Dialogue on Racism? These Black Teens are Living It,” Seth Freed Wessler, Dec. 2, 2014, Talking Points Memo • “Why did Ferguson Erupt? The Answer Depends on Your Race,” Seth Freed Wessler, Aug. 23, 2014, NBC News • “Ferguson: The Latest Racially Tinged Case Of Death-ByPolice,” Phillip Martin, Aug. 20, 2014, WGBH News • “Massachusetts Residents Protest Ferguson Decision,” Phillip Martin, Dec. 1, 2014, WGBH News
THE ECONOMIC INEQUALITY REPORTING PROJECT One of the Schuster Institute’s newest Senior Fellows, Seth Freed Wessler, is a reporter at In Plain Sight, an NBC News online editorial initiative devoted to reporting on poverty and inequality, sponsored by a grant from the Ford Foundation. • “Need a Doctor? This Program Will Get You a Lawyer, Too.” Seth Freed Wessler and Kat Aaron, Dec. 14, 2014, NBC News • “Ohio Woman Kicked Off Welfare for Not Reporting She Was In a Coma,” Seth Freed Wessler, Dec. 5, 2014, NBC News • “Endless Debt: Native Americans Plagued by High-Interest Loans,” Seth Freed Wessler, Oct. 31, 2014, NBC News • “Endless Debt: Native Americans Plagued by High-Interest Loans,” Seth Freed Wessler, Oct. 6, 2014, NBC News • “Easy Prey: Foster Kids Face High Risk of Identity Theft,” Seth Freed Wessler, July 21, 2014, NBC News • “Desperate Times: Fewer Americans Blame Poor for Poverty,” Seth Freed Wessler, June 20, 2014, NBC News • “A Nonprofit That’s Bridging the Opportunity Gap,” Janelle Nanos, April 2014, Boston Magazine The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 23 of 44
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Tao Lee squats next to three BLU-49 fragmentation cluster bombs found in a cleared field overlooking his village in Attapeu. When the field was lit to clear it, the fire “cooked off ” several other bombs. They rained shrapnel on the village in the middle of the night, forcing its temporary evacuation. Photo by Senior Fellow Jerry Redfern
THE GLOBAL INEQUALITY REPORTING PROJECT The Legacy of Unexploded American Bombs in Laos: 50 Years Later PUBLISHED! 8
Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press), by Senior Fellows Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern, supported by a Schuster Institute microsite.
The Vietnam War may be over for the United States, but it rages on in Laos, where millions of unexploded bombs remain a threat to people, animals, and the environment. Eternal Harvest was a finalist for four prestigious prizes: the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal, the Indie Book Award (Current Events/Social Change), and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Book of the Year.
From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. and its allies dropped 6 billion pounds of bombs on Laos—more than one ton for every man, woman, and child in the country at the time. History’s largest bombing campaign averaged one bombing raid every 8 minutes over 9 years. It was an attempt to cut North Vietnamese supply lines to South Vietnam, and to support the Laotian government in its fight against a communist
Each red dot in the map above, created by the National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action Sector in Laos PDR, represents the location of at least one bombing mission in Laos—not one bomb. “This map is pretty remarkable,” says Jerry Redfern, “but it still doesn’t show the scope and scale of what happened. The dots don’t show that many sites were bombed repeatedly— sometimes hundreds of times.”
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insurgency. Laos remains, per capita, the most heavily bombed country on earth. And those bombs are still exploding.
By the numbers
Up to 30 percent of the bombs dropped on Laos did not detonate. This unexploded ordnance (UXO) is scattered across Laotian farmlands and villages, where it remains today. If hit with a hoe, tossed, or moved, these bombs can explode, blasting anything – or anyone – in the vicinity to pieces. In a country where roughly 75 percent of adults work in agriculture, that means UXO is a constant threat.
6 billion pounds
Men and boys die and are injured more often, because their work puts them closer to the unexploded bombs. When a Laotian family loses a male breadwinner, or when he becomes someone in need of care, women bear the burden, taking on extra work while also maintaining the household. Compounding the problem, many rural villagers—including children—supplement family incomes by hunting for scrap metal, which is an inherently dangerous task. Laos ranks among the world’s poorest quarter of nations. Lost breadwinning adults and stunted generations are part of what keeps Laos poor.
Up to 80 million
Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern tell this story in moving detail in their book, Eternal Harvest. The Institute supported this work through small grants, editorial advice, a supporting microsite and infographic, and promotion. While the U.S. is the world’s single largest financial supporter of UXO clearance, it is also simultaneously a leading manufacturer of munitions and cluster bombs. As of March 2015, 91 countries had ratified the international ban on cluster bombs, which went into effect in 2010. The U.S. has still not signed onto that ban.
Death & Danger at the U.S.-Mexico Border A series of investigative reports by Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre, who had a 20122013 Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Foundation to report on U.S. deportation of undocumented immigrants. • “Is Rape the Price Migrant Women Must Pay for Chasing the American Dream?” Erin Siegal McIntyre, Sept. 9, 2014, Fusion • “Read These Kids’ Horrifying Tales of Abuse in U.S. Detention Facilities,” Erin Siegal McIntyre, July 9, 2014, Take Part • “Not All Kids Are Equal: Central American Kids Get Court Dates, Mexicans Get the Boot,” Erin Siegal McIntyre, July 10, 2014, Fusion • “Death in the desert: The dangerous trek between Mexico and Arizona,” Erin Siegal McIntyre, March 11, 2014, Al Jazeera America • “Teenage drug mules: Cartels are tapping minors to smuggle meth, coke,” Erin Siegal McIntyre, Feb. 19, 2014, Al Jazeera America • “Border Deaths: The Last Crossing of Tiger Martinez,” Erin Siegal McIntyre and Seth Freed Wessler, Feb. 25, 2014, Al Jazeera America • “Tijuana ‘tent city’ shelters deported immigrants,” Erin Siegal McIntyre, Nov. 28, 2014, Al Jazeera America The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 25 of 44
Amount of bombs dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War between 1964–1973 Unexploded bombs left in Laos after U.S. bombings ended in 1973
20,000+ people hurt,
maimed, or killed in Laos by U.S. bombs since bombings ended
$17 million per day
Estimated amount (in 2012 dollars) U.S. spent on the bombing campaign in Laos during the Vietnam War, over 9 years $74 million Total amount the U.S. has given to Laos for UXO clearance, education, rehabilitation, and aid since bombings ended
$16 billion
Estimated cost to clear Laos of all unexploded bombs, according to a U.S. bombing expert
1,333 years
Time it would take to make Laos safe at the 2014 rate of U.S. funding
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
Waging War & Peace A stunning series of textured investigative feature articles by Senior Fellow James Verini about life on the ragged borders of war and peace. Verini is based in East Africa. • “Dr. Machar, I Presume: How the World’s Youngest Nation Descended Into Bloody Civil War,” James Verini, Oct. 1, 2014, National Geographic
• “Close Your Heart: The Central African Republic’s sectarian civil war has divided a once peaceful nation, and pitted brother against brother,” James Verini, Sept. 2, 2014, Slate
• “In Rwanda, Reconciliation is Hard Won,” James Verini, April 2, 2014, National Geographic WINNER! 8 GEORGE POLK AWARD
• “Should the United Nations Wage War to Keep Peace?” James Verini, March 27, 2014, National Geographic Verini spent a year exploring the apparent futility of U.N. intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a sprawling nation wracked by decades of civil war. He examined implications of the U.N.’s decision to finally wage war against one of the largest and deadliest of the Congo’s rebel combatants, the M23 Militia.
WINNER! 8 2015 NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD
• “Love and Ruin,” James Verini, Feb. 2, 2014, The Atavist Two adventurers fell in love in Kabul, Afghanistan in the 1960s, during a heady and short-lived era of conniving spies, future mujahideen, and cocktail-swilling cosmopolitans. Verini traveled to Afghanistan in search of the story, and tells an exhilarating and heartbreaking tale of lives lived to the fullest in one of the world’s most fascinating and forbidding places.
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ETHICS & JUSTICE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING FELLOWSHIPS
In 2014 the Schuster Institute welcomed David Black, Michael McLeod, Janelle Nanos, and Seth Freed Wessler to the Institute’s Ethics & Justice Investigative Reporting Fellowships, bringing our total of fellows to 19. These four extraordinary journalists join our pioneering “newsroom without walls,” an ongoing community that gives independent investigative reporters an institutional home and the support they need. Through a dedicated grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Institute is able to offer editorial guidance, placement advice, hundreds of hours of research assistance, access to expensive academic and library databases, small support grants, and publicity for the results of their investigations so that their efforts get the attention—from the public and from policymakers—that they need to to excel in exposing violations of human rights and social justice.
DAVID BLACK, Criminal Justice Reporting Project. Black is
an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and producer based in New York City whose Schuster Institute fellowship will focus on a television series screenplay he is writing, based on deep research, about criminal justice and society. He is the author of nine books, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Plague Years: A Chronicle of AIDS the Epidemic of Our Times, and more than 150 articles in magazines that include The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone. David Black has risked his life a number of times while reporting, including being put under house arrest by Baby Doc's secret police in Haiti, infiltrating totalitarian therapy cults, being abandoned on a desert island, and exposing a sex trafficking organization in the East Village. His many awards include the Writers Guild of America Award, the National Magazine Award for Reporting, the National Science Writers Award, and nominations for the Emmy and Golden Globe.
MICHAEL MCLEOD, Environment & Justice Reporting Project. McLeod is an award-winning journalist, author, and film
producer based in Oregon whose Schuster Institute fellowship focuses on investigating a landmark case of environmental pollution in a small upstate New York town, where citizens’ health and homes have been devastated by PCB dumping. Forty years later, they are still fighting the government and the corporate polluter for relief and for justice, in a nightmare playing out in scores of cities and towns across the U.S. After beginning his journalism career at a West Coast NBC television affiliate, McLeod The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 27 of 44
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New Senior Fellows for our Newsroom without Walls
NEWSROOM WITHOUT WALLS
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
expanded into commercial film production, specializing in documentaries and news. His clients have included ABC, NBC, PBS, King Broadcasting, and Discovery, and the PBS series “Frontline.” His investigations have looked at such subjects as death row, the origins of the U.S. Constitution, U.S. sports, the building of an Alaskan oil pipeline, hate crimes, sexual predators, Waco, and endangered fisheries. He is the author of Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot (University of California Press, 2009). His many awards include the DuPont-Columbia, Cine Golden Eagle, Ohio State Award, and a Peabody.
JANELLE NANOS, Modern-Day Slavery & Human Trafficking Reporting Project. Nanos is a Boston-based writer, editor, and
journalism professor who, during her Schuster Institute fellowship, is examining the commercial sexual exploitation of children within the U.S. She is writing a book with someone who works in the academy who was trafficked as a child—and who devotes her life to ending such child trafficking. The Boston Globe recently named Nanos editor of BetaBoston, the Globe's new tech and innovation site. From 2011 to 2014, she was a senior editor at Boston Magazine, where she wrote about ideas, people, and businesses that shape the way the city works. She earned her master's degree in journalism from New York University, where she was awarded a Knight Foundation fellowship for her outstanding reporting. She started her career at New York Magazine, where she worked as a reporter for three years, then joined the staff of National Geographic Traveler as Special Projects editor, developing multiplatform projects that spanned the print publication, tablet, and web. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Slate, Marie Claire, The Village Voice, Forbes, and Mother Jones. She teaches magazine writing at Boston College.
SETH FREED WESSLER, Economic Inequality Reporting Project. Wessler is an independent investigative reporter based in
New York who is currently covering poverty and inequality for NBC News. He has reported from across the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean on immigration, the social safety net, and criminal justice, subjects that will also be the focus of his Schuster Institute fellowship. Wessler has produced stories for outlets including ProPublica, This American Life, Elle, and PRI's The World. He has been a staff reporter for Colorlines and a researcher for Race Forward, where he led a groundbreaking investigation revealing how thousands of U.S. citizen children were forced into foster care after their parents were deported by federal immigration authorities. After receiving the 2013 New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute’s Reporting Award, he delivered a ProPublica investigation on how state courts can sever parental rights because of a mental health diagnosis–even if there’s no harm or neglect. He has been a finalist for the Casey Medal, and has won a Hillman Prize and several Ippies Awards. Wessler is an Open Society Foundation 2014 Soros Justice Fellow. The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 28 of 44
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SCHUSTER INSTITUTE SENIOR FELLOWS York City, whose Schuster Institute fellowship will focus on criminal justice issues as he develops a television series.
Michael Blanding is an award-winning investigative journalist based in Boston, and author of The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps (Gotham Books, 2014).
Scott Carney is an investigative journalist, anthropologist, and author whose stories blend
narrative nonfiction with ethnography. His book A Death On Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment was published by Gotham Books in March 2015.
Karen Coates is an investigative reporter focusing primarily on issues involving the
environment, health, human rights, and global inequality, and author of three books. She spends at least six months of the year in Southeast Asia. Her most recent book, written with her husband, Senior Fellow Jerry Redern, is Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press, 2013). The book examines how the hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs that the U.S. dropped 40 years ago in Laos continues to kill, maim, and poison Laotians.
Madeline Drexler is a journalist and author specializing in public health, medicine, and travel, and the staff editor of Harvard Public Health Magazine. Her most recent book is A Splendid Isolation: Lessons on Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan (Amazon, 2014), a reported essay on that nation’s governing policy of Gross National Happiness.
Jan Goodwin is an award-winning investigative journalist and author of two books based in New York City. She has covered 17 wars, testified before Congress, and been a Soros Media Fellow and a Kiplinger Fellow.
E.J. Graff is an award-winning journalist, commentator, and author best known for helping
to pioneer the gender and sexuality beat. Her Schuster Institute investigation into fraud and corruption in international adoption won four journalism awards and paved the way for a new federal law designed to help stop shady U.S. adoption agencies from buying, defrauding, coercing, and even kidnapping children away from their birthfamilies to sell into international adoption.
Brooke Kroeger is a New York-based journalist, author of four books, and professor of
journalism at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute whose recent book is Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception (Northwestern University Press, 2012). In collaboration with the New York University library, Kroeger created an online database of thousands of groundbreaking stories written by American reporters who went undercover, going all the way back to slavery. She is expanding the database to include undercover reporting around the globe.
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David Black is an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and producer based in New
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
NEWSROOM WITHOUT WALLS
Phillip Martin is an award-winning investigative reporter for WGBH News; a regular panelist
for WGBH-TV’s “Basic Black”; an occasional panelist for WGBH’s “Beat the Press”; and an adjunct professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. Martin and the Schuster Institute collaborate on selected social justice and human rights stories for WGBH radio and television.
Erin Siegal McIntyre is a multimedia investigative journalist and author, currently producing and reporting special reports and documentaries for Univision. Her 2012-13 Soros Justice Fellowship enabled her coverage of the deportation of undocumented immigrants, with articles in The Christian Science Monitor, Playboy, Fronteras, and other outlets.
Maryn McKenna is an award-winning science writer and author specializing in public health,
global health, and food policy. She is a regular contributor for Scientific American, Wired, and National Geographic's food platform “The Plate,” and author of Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010). McKenna is an MIT research affiliate in comparative media studies/writing and was Project Fellow at the MIT Knight Science Journalism Program. She is writing a book for National Geographic about how the intertwined histories of antibiotic development and agriculture have affected our health and diets, land use and labor, international trade and global business. Under the auspices of the MIT Knight Science Journalism program, she will tell this story through video, audio, and data visualization.
Michael McLeod is an award-winning journalist, author, and film producer based in
Oregon, whose Schuster Institute fellowship will focus on investigating a landmark case of environmental pollution, still devastating residents’ lives forty years after first being reported to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), as is the case in towns and cities across the U.S. McLeod plans to release a book, documentary, and an in-depth website in collaboration with the Schuster Institute.
Tracie McMillan is an investigative journalist whose groundbreaking reporting focuses on
the intersection of food and class. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table (Scribner, 2012).
Janelle Nanos is a writer, editor, and journalism professor in Boston whose Schuster Institute fellowship will examine the commercial sexual exploitation of children within the U.S. She is the editor of BetaBoston, The Boston Globe's new tech and innovation site.
Jerry Redfern is an independent photojournalist who reports primarily from Southeast Asia on
issues involving the environment, health, and human rights. He and his wife Karen Coates coauthored Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press, 2013).
Maria Stenzel, an award-winning photojournalist and Fellow at Harvard University’s Film
Studies Center, has covered environmental issues, natural history, science, indigenous cultures, and history for National Geographic Magazine since 1991. She has won a National Magazine Award and Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and awards from World Press Photo, the National Press Photographers Association, and Communication Arts.
James Verini is an investigative journalist based in East Africa. He has reported from Afghanistan, The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 30 of 44
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Seth Freed Wessler is currently covering poverty and inequality for NBC News. An
independent reporter based in New York, Wessler is investigating abusive immigrant detention as part of his recently awarded Open Society Soros Justice Fellowship.
Hella Winston is a sociologist, investigative journalist, and author who has investigated
corruption at the intersection of the criminal justice system and the strictly Orthodox Jewish communities of New York and New Jersey. Her ongoing, careful reporting revealed that some ultra-Orthodox rabbis were sexually abusing children, an open secret in those communities. Her revelations that former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes overlooked crimes by these powerful community leaders helped end his 40-year tenure.
Some of the Books by Schuster Institute Senior Fellows:
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the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Sudan, and contributed to such publications as National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, New York Magazine, Washington Monthly, NewYorker.com, and Slate.
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
MORE 2014 WORK BY OUR FELLOWS Food & Justice PUBLISHED! 8 GUEST EDITOR! 8
“The New Face of Hunger in the U.S.” Tracie McMillan, Aug. 2014, National Geographic “Focus On: Food Security and Climate Change,” Karen Coates, Summer-Fall 2014, Global Press Journal “Chicken Company Perdue Takes Big Steps to Reduce Antibiotic Use,” Maryn McKenna, Sept. 3, 2014, Wired Commentary by Tracie McMillan in “72 Ways That Food Can Change the World,” Sept. 14, 2014, Eater “A Story of Chicken,” Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern, Oct./Nov. 2014, The Cook’s Cook “Can Whole Foods Change the Way Poor People Eat? Challenging elitism, racism, and obesity with a grocery store may sound crazy. Here’s what happened when Whole Foods tried to do it in Detroit.” Tracie McMillan, Nov. 19, 2014, Slate
NEW DATABASE! 8
To accompany this article, McMillan posted a meticulously researched online database enabling price comparisons between Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, and the supermarket King Cole. “Reorganizing U.S. Food Policy—What Would it Take?” Maryn McKenna, Dec. 12, 2014, National Geographic: The Plate Local Food Environments: Food Access in America 2014, edited by Kimberly Morland. Forward by Tracie McMillan. Sept. 2, 2014, CRC Press “Fresh Direct: How Farms’ Extra Crops Feed the Hungry,” Seth Freed Wessler, Aug. 20, 2014, NBC News “Shift to ‘Food Insecurity’ Creates Startling New Picture of Hunger in America,” Tracie McMillan, July 16, 2014, National Geographic Daily News Online “Field Studies: Think you know the current state of U.S. agriculture? Don't go betting the farm until you've read this.” Tracie McMillan," July 7, 2014, OnEarth Note: McMillan was a monthly columnist for OnEarth, the online magazine of Natural Resources Defense Council, publishing on the intersections between food, environment, and social equity. “Cheat sheet: Myths about hunger in America,” Tracie McMillan, June 30, 2014, The Chautauquan Daily “The Abstinence Method: Dutch Farmers Say No to Antibiotics for Livestock,” Maryn McKenna, June 17, 2014, Modern Farmer “When Arugula Became a Thing: How Can We Tell a Food Fad From a Revolution?” Up For Discussion, Tracie McMillan, June 2, 2014, ZÓCALO Public Square The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 32 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
“The Future of Chicken: How to Mass-Produce Meat without Breeding Killer Microbes,” Maryn McKenna, April 30, 2014, Slate “The Global Land Grab,” Karen Coates, April 25, 2014, Slate “Are Stores Making Bank off Food Stamps?” Tracie McMillan, April 22, 2014, Mother Jones “Why I Care About Food,” Maryn McKenna, April 14, 2014, National Geographic “How the Local Food Economy Is Challenging Big Food,” Tracie McMillan, April 14, 2014, Next City “A French Farm Show: Cows, protesters, and — of course — cheese,” Maryn McKenna, March 7, 2014, Modern Farmer Note: Schuster Institute Senior Fellows Maryn McKenna and Tracie McMillan are invited contributors to National Geographic.
“
Writing about food is the only way I’ve found to get Americans to talk about class without being jerks. That’s my meta-objective: to foster cross-class understanding so we can fix problems like poverty and education. That’s a high bar, though. I’d settle for seeing fresh, healthy food be as cheap and accessible as junk food is today.” – Tracie McMillan McMillan was asked to contribute to “72 Ways That Food Can Change the World,” a special collection in Eater. Other invited contributors included food celebrities Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver, and Newman’s Own charity.
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2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
Health & Justice “Ebola Here and There: Knowing When It Is and Isn’t Over,” Maryn McKenna, Nov. 13, 2014, Wired “Keys to Controlling Ebola in the US: Travel Records and Infection Control,” Maryn McKenna, Oct. 1, 2014, Wired “White House Actions on Antibiotic Resistance: Big Steps Plus Disappointments,” Maryn McKenna, Sept. 22, 2014, Wired “The Mathematics of Ebola Trigger Stark Warnings: Act Now or Regret It,” Maryn McKenna, Sept. 14, 2014, Wired “Unseen Suburban Danger: Children Dying of Mosquito-Borne Diseases,” Maryn McKenna, Sept. 10, 2014, Wired Humanitarian aid workers in eastern Sierra Leone, one of the areas hardest hit by the ebola epidemic. Photo credits: ©EC/ECHO/ Cyprien Fabre
“CDC Director on Ebola: ‘The Window of Opportunity Really Is Closing,’” Maryn McKenna, Sept. 2, 2014, Wired “Ebola in Africa and the U.S.: A Curation,” Maryn McKenna, Aug. 4, 2014, Wired “Resistant ‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Increase Fivefold in Southeastern U.S.” Maryn McKenna, July 26, 2014, Wired “Update on the Found Vials: There Weren’t 6; There Were 327. (Not All of Them Were Smallpox),” Maryn McKenna, July 16, 2014, Wired “CDC Lab Errors and Their Implications: Congressional Hearing Today,” Maryn McKenna, July 16, 2014, Wired “The Leader of the Smallpox Eradication Effort Speaks About the Virus’ Rediscovery,” Maryn McKenna, July 14, 2014, Wired “What`s Making These Auto Plant Workers So Sick?” Seth Freed Wessler, July 14, 2014, NBC News “Virus in Found Tubes of Smallpox Is Viable,” Maryn McKenna, July 11, 2014, Wired “What the Forthcoming White House Report on Antibiotic Resistance Will Ask For,” Maryn McKenna, July 11, 2014, Wired “Found: Forgotten Vials of Smallpox,” Maryn McKenna, July 8, 2014, Wired “Government Leadership on Antibiotic Resistance — in Europe,” Maryn McKenna, July 3, 2014, Wired “Drug Abuse: Antipsychotics in Nursing Homes,” Jan Goodwin, July/August 2014, AARP Bulletin “Enhancing Flu in the Lab: Are Accidents Inevitable?” Maryn McKenna, June 30, 2014, Wired “CDC: Traveling for Business Can Be An Expensive Health Risk,” Maryn McKenna, June 27, 2014, Wired The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 34 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
“U.S. Travelers Return Home With Tropical Disease. Will It Spread in the States?” Maryn McKenna, June 19, 2014, Wired “A World Cup Visitor: Polio from Africa in Brazil,” Maryn McKenna, June 25, 2014, Wired “‘Individual Actions Are Doomed to Failure’: Coalition Asks for Global Action on Antibiotics,” Maryn McKenna, June 24, 2014, Wired “Very Serious Superbugs in Imported Seafood,” Maryn McKenna, June 11, 2014, Wired
“Iceman Cometh,” Scott Carney, May 21, 2014, Playboy
“Iceman Cometh,” Scott Carney, May 21, 2014, Playboy “Medicine: The Commodified Body,” Scott Carney, April 24, 2014, Nature “There’s Something About Molly,” Michael Blanding, Jan. 26, 2014, Boston Globe Magazine
• An in-depth look at the use of a popular recreational drug, “Molly”
And More Reporting “What Are We All So Worried About?” Karen Coates, March 17, 2014, Dame Magazine “Kellner’s Lawyer Seeking Tougher Sentence for Molester,” Hella Winston, July 8, 2014, The Jewish Week “The Fight for Marriage Equality,” E.J. Graff, May 17, 2014, The Boston Globe “Taming the Beast Within,” Janelle Nanos, March 2014, Boston Magazine “Undercover Reporting: An American Tradition,” Brooke Kroeger, Spring 2014, IRE Journal “OSHA Chief: Inequality is About Workplace Hazards, Too,” Seth Freed Wessler, July 14, 2014, NBC News “Should A Mental Illness Mean You Lose Your Kid?” Seth Freed Wessler, May 30, 2014, Huffington Post and The Daily Beast “Undocumented Immigrants Face Grim Golden Years,” Seth Freed Wessler, June 5, 2014, NBC News “Losing Aaron,” Janelle Nanos, January 2014, Boston Magazine “Wrongful Convictions: Can Prosecutors Reform Themselves?” Hella Winston, March 27, 2014, The Crime Report
“Losing Aaron,” Janelle Nanos, January 2014, Boston Magazine
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 35 of 44
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
From the Acknowledgments of The Map Thief: “I can’t say enough about the support provided to me by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, as well as the support it provides to great journalism in general. Specifically I have to thank Florence Graves … as well as their team of indefatigable research assistants, including Gilda Di Carli, Megan Kerrigan, Adelina Simpson, Aliya Bean, Simon Diamond Cramer, and especially Tate Herbert, who helped corral many of the wonderful maps that illustrate this volume.”
THE MAP THIEF The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps Published in June 2014 by Gotham Books, Senior Fellow Michael Blanding’s investigation into this crime by an esteemed antiquarian map dealer received rave reviews from publications that included The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Miami Herald, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer. And don’t miss: • “The 10 Most Important Maps in U.S. History,” Michael Blanding, July 18, 2014, Mental Floss • “The Lie That Charted New England’s Future,” Michael Blanding, June 15, 2014, The Boston Globe • “On the Trail of Martha’s Vineyard’s Rare Map Thief,” Michael Blanding, June 15, 2014, Boston Globe Magazine • “Why It Matters that National Geographic Just Ceded Crimea to Vladimir Putin,” Michael Blanding, March 21, 2014, Slate
“Blanding’s most moving passages commemorate those who helped build and, bit by bit, envisage the world as we know it.” — The Wall Street Journal
WHAT IS GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS? Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Madeline Drexler, the staff editor of the Harvard Public Health Magazine, independently traveled to Bhutan to examine Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness policy. Lyrically reported and intellectually agile, this Amazon Single examines how this onceisolated Himalayan kingdom’s social ideals are being challenged by rapid development and material realities.
A Splendid Isolation: Lessons on Happiness from the Kingdom of Bhutan Madeline Drexler (Amazon, 2014) The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 36 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
2014 AWARDS & HONORS Schuster Institute article: “Indonesia’s Palm Oil Industry Rife with Human Rights
Clarion Award
Senior Fellow Tracie McMillan was awarded this prestigious fellowship to teach
Koeppel Journalism Fellow, Wesleyan University Grand Gold Award for Best Article of the Year Leadership Award, Alliance for Prudent Use of Antibiotics Freelancer of the Year
Abuses,” July 22, 2013, Bloomberg Businessweek.
“Writing (And Arguing) About Inequality: How to Make Your Case.”
Senior Fellow Madeline Drexler’s “Guns & Suicide: The Hidden Toll” (Spring 2013,
Harvard Public Health Magazine).
Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna’s work reporting on antibiotic resistance, from the
Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics.
Senior Fellow Erin Siegal McIntyre was named “Freelancer of the Year” and awarded
three first-place awards by Guild Freelancers for her reporting on immigration.
Senior Fellow James Verini for Feature Writing for “Love and Ruin,” Feb. 25, 2014,
George Polk Award
Senior Fellow James Verini for Magazine Reporting for “Should the United Nations Wage War to Keep Peace?” March 27, 2014, National Geographic, investigating UN intervention in the decades-long civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
National Magazine Award
Senior Fellow Michael Blanding’s book, The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an
NPR’s Great Reads
The Atavist, about a love affair between two unusual characters amidst years of war in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Esteemed Rare Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps, was listed.
Senior Fellow Phillip Martin, WGBH News, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, and the International Center for Journalists, for
WGBH’s eight-part radio broadcast “Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok,” an exploration of human trafficking between Southeast Asia and New England.
Senior Fellows Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern’s recent book, Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos (ThingsAsian Press, 2013).
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 37 of 44
Gold Radio Winner; Edward R. Murrow Award; Clarion Award Finalist: investigative Reporters & Editors Book of the Year; Eric Hoffer Grand Prize; Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; Indie Book Awards
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
MENTORING STUDENTS
MENTORING: HIRING STUDENTS AS RESEARCH ASSISTANTS The Schuster Institute hires Brandeis students from all majors as research assistants. We supervise as they conduct some of the day-to-day research needed for in-depth investigative reporting. This hands-on experience in our small newsroom teaches them to apply critical thinking skills to real-world problems, to examine the gap between the official story and the facts, and to see how investigative reporting can have a direct and lasting effect. Toward this end, we work closely with the Journalism Program and the Legal Studies Program, both within the American Studies Department. Students can either earn internship credit or they may be hired directly by the Institute. We offer students a unique opportunity to fuse academic learning with real world experience while developing strong writing, multimedia, and publication skills, mentored by senior investigative reporters. Students praise their time working at the Schuster Institute. They tell us that their work here has led them to their careers, showed them how to channel their passion for social justice, taught them to apply their research and writing skills, revealed how painstaking reliable investigative work must be, and much more. This year the Institute hired 28 undergraduate and two graduate students, breaking last year’s record. Each year the Institute receives more applications than the previous year — usually referred by students who have already worked with us.
Richard Kaufman ’58 Memorial Prize Winners Student researchers Shafaq Hasan, Gina Giorgi, and Joanna Nix received the Richard Kaufman ’58 Memorial Prize in May for their outstanding work on the Schuster Institute’s Justice Brandeis Law Project. The prize is awarded to students who achieve academic excellence and show leadership Schuster Institute research assistants Shafaq Hasan, Gina Giorgi, and Joanna Nix, Class of 2014. on the Brandeis campus. The three student researchers each worked on a likely wrongful conviction case for at least three years, untangling complex webs of information to provide a clearer picture of the crime and subsequent investigation and trial process for a man who has been imprisoned for more than 20 years. He now has an attorney fighting for his release, and a judge recently allowed his motion to test physical evidence for DNA.
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 38 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
IN STUDENTS’ OWN WORDS Working at Schuster was such a life-changing experience for me. – Brian Boyd, 2012
Beyond exposing an array of social and environmental injustices to our world, the Schuster Institute continually inspires students and others to dedicate their lives to seeking justice. Schuster embodies Brandeis’ continually evolving mission so beautifully, and I am forever grateful to have been a part of this groundbreaking work. – Becca Richman, 2013 I’ve learned to analyze and organize huge amounts of information and think critically and creatively about that information. I’ve become a clearer and more succinct writer. Working with others, sharing information, bouncing ideas off one another, and collaborating on memos have all helped me find ways to cooperate with nearly anyone.
Working at the Schuster Institute is intellectually stimulating, empowering, and always exciting. – Rachel Gillette, 2011 The excitement I feel when I go to work every week for the Schuster Institute – the people I meet, the projects I work on, the mysteries I uncover – is a true blessing. – Jake Yarmus, 2010 The Institute inspired my thesis topic and also gave me a career goal – to be an attorney working for an innocence project. I learned research skills, how to think like a journalist and a lawyer, and the importance of investigative journalism in correcting injustice. – Mat Schutzer, 2008 Judicial Law Clerk, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia
– David Altman, 2015 You learn to become skeptical about every fact and source until you can fully corroborate that information…. to be very thorough and attentive to detail, as any minor mistake could affect the investigation… to think critically and make connections between important pieces of information.
Working at the Schuster Institute changed my career path. If there was such a thing as a marriage between basic science and investigative journalism, I think it would be public health—which I am pursuing. – Rachel Seiler, 2007 St. Louis University MPH 2010
– Shafaq Hasan, 2014 The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 39 of 44
MENTORING STUDENTS
Working at the Institute has been great. I’ve learned to think critically and with the mind of an investigator about issues and assumptions, to read between the lines of documents, and to gather all available information. I’ve learned the importance of organization and clarity – and of persistence and patience! – Alisa Partlan, 2015
It’s hard to imagine I could work for a publication or center again where I would feel so strongly that the people I worked for were truly dedicated to their responsibility – to inform public knowledge about social and governmental policy and to expose injustice – more than they are dedicated to furthering their careers. – Jeremy Konar, 2010
MENTORING STUDENTS
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
Ultimately, I want to be an investigative journalist and this passion was fostered at Schuster. The value that the Schuster Institute places on student work is also rare and crucial in boosting self-confidence and motivation. In terms of skills, the Schuster Institute has provided me with a frame of reference on how to conduct investigations. Organizational skills, the constant flow of communication and updates in terms of what has been done, what is to be done and interesting aspects discovered allows for a very productive collaborative environment. On a personal level, Schuster gave me the confidence to approach any task, no matter how remote or complex, with confidence and conviction. – Gilda DiCarli, 2013, Candidate for joint master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Sciences Po in Paris, France.
The Schuster Institute gave me an opportunity to work with my peers and with professional journalists to become a better researcher, a better writer, and a better team player. – Gina Giorgi, 2014 Working at the Schuster Institute has been the most rewarding and valuable part of my Brandeis experience. The time I spent here helped me to realize that a job is just a job unless you love it – then it becomes a passion. – Liz Macedo, 2010 Beyond exposing an array of social and environmental injustices to our world, the Schuster Institute continually inspires students and others to dedicate their lives to seeking justice. Schuster embodies Brandeis’ continually evolving mission so beautifully, and I am forever grateful to have been a part of this groundbreaking work. – Becca Richman, 2013
Environmental Justice Internship at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Schuster Institute Founding Director Florence Graves and Brandeis Professor of Environmental Studies Laura Goldin created this collaborative internship program for Brandeis undergraduates. Talented Environmental Studies Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna (center) students will work closely with Schuster Institute Senior and her environmental justice interns Aliza Heeren (left) and Fellows who are investigating Madeline Rosenberg attend the screening of the documentary Resistance. environmental issues. Those reporters will be able to call on Professor Goldin for her scholarly insight and advice.
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 40 of 44
10TH ANNIVERSARY
2014 SPECIAL EVENTS Every year the Schuster Institute organizes special events for the Brandeis community. In 2014, those included:
America’s best-known anti-death penalty activist ‘stuns crowd,’ inspires students Sister Helen Prejean, perhaps the most famous Roman Catholic nun in the U.S., has been a spiritual advisor to death-row inmates for more than 25 years. She’s also America’s most famous advocate for ending the death penalty. Her riveting Feb. 6, 2014 lecture followed a screening of the film Dead Man Walking, based on her New York Times bestselling book that started a national debate about the death penalty. Prejean had come to educate the Brandeis community, to talk about the shocking facts surrounding the death penalty and how it is administered in the United States. For example, she pointed out that 80 percent of those on death-row are imprisoned in “the 10 Southern states that practiced slavery.” But as The Brandeis Hoot reported the following day in a story headlined, “Anti-death penalty activist stuns crowd,” by the time Sister Helen Prejean “stepped back from the podium to take questions from the more than 200 people gathered in Levin Ballroom Thursday night, she was talking to a different audience...the emotional weight and value of her story had been fully absorbed by the crowd. Some were crying. Others simply sat in the silence and awe….” Prejean’s message to the rapt audience turned out to be a rousing, inspiring call to action to students who seemed primed to hear it and who longed for her advice. “You can figure out some things, you can set a direction, but get in there and act in some kind of way, no matter how small.... It can be as simple as writing a letter, but the minute your soul is unleashed and you do something for justice, it gives you energy and life, and you want to stay in that current.” She urged those who may think they need to know more about an issue before getting involved not to wait. “You’re never going to figure out your whole little blueprint of life, or how you are going to be a person of justice. You just get in there and then the people we are involved with teach us and awaken it in us.”
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 41 of 44
2014 ACHIEVEMENTS
Antibiotic-Resistant Infections Kill Hundreds of Thousands of People Each Year At the Schuster Institute’s Nov. 13 screening event of the documentary film Resistance at Brandeis University, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna was a panelist with filmmaker Michael Graziano and the Vice President of the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics (APUA) Dr. Thomas O’Brien. After the Institute screened the documentary “Resistance,” a panel of speakers answered questions. The day following McKenna’s appearance at Brandeis, APUA honored McKenna with a 2014 APUA Leadership Award for her work researching and reporting on antibiotic resistance and its implications for global health and health policy. This Institute event was cosponsored by the Biology Department, Brandeis Students for Environmental Action, the Environmental Studies Program, Graduate Programs in Sustainable International Development, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Health: Science, Society and Policy Program, and the Research Group on Global Development and Sustainability, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management.
Recognizing the Roma Conflict: An Exploration of Human Rights The Roma population for the past several centuries has endured unapologetic racism and discrimination. This event involved a panel of speakers expert on the current status and struggles of the Roma throughout the world. Damiana Andonova, a student research assistant at the Schuster Institute, helped to organize this event after an obstetrics internship in Bulgaria as a part of the Sorenson Fellowship, which is sponsored by The International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University. The Institute cosponsored this 2014 ’DEIS Impact! event with the Health, Science, Society, and Policy Program and the Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Program at Brandeis University.
Chronic Pain in America: How Are We Managing? In her book A Nation in Pain: Healing Our Biggest Health Problem, nationally syndicated health columnist and former Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center scholar Judy Foreman says there “is an appalling mismatch between what people in pain need and what doctors know. Out of 238 million adult Americans, 100 million live in chronic pain. Yet most doctors know almost nothing about it, much less how to treat it.” The Institute cohosted this event with the Women’s Studies Research Center. “Foreman has written a superb analysis of this most distressing of medical conditions. Many people will thank her for it.” – Marcia Angell, M.D., Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University www.brandeis.edu/investigate || www.schusterinstituteinvestigations.org 42 of 44
Celebrating
years of watchdog
PRESIDENT CLINTON: INSTITUTE’S IMPACT JOURNALISM MODEL ‘HELPS US TO BECOME BETTER CITIZENS’ Conversation with President Clinton to benefit the Schuster Institute (Oct. 3, 2012)
PAST EVENTS
reporting
President Bill Clinton told those gathered at the home of Elaine and Gerald Schuster for a benefit thathe’s grateful that t he Schuster Institute is providing a new journalism “model that will help us become better citizens.” He added, “ The good news about the information world we live in is that an eight-year-old can get on the Internet and find out in a minute and a half what I had to go to college to learn. The bad news is you have no idea whether it’s accurate or not, half the time. And it’s like the political equivalent of chaos theory in physics. That there’s all this stuff out there, and nobody’s connecting the dots.” This news chaos has left a vaccum that the Schuster Institute’s impact journalism model is helping to fill, and it “will help us to become better citizens. And I can’t tell you how important I think that is,” President Clinton said.
SCHUSTER INSTITUTE CO-SPONSORS U.N. PANEL OF EXPERTS ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING AND THE NEWS MEDIA “Hidden in Plain Sight: The news media’s role in exposing human trafficking” (June 10, 2010) U.S. ambassadors and award-winning journalists discussed the news media’s power and responsibility to shed light on victims, perpetrators, and those who profit from modernday slavery, in a panel of experts that was cosponsored by the Schuster Institute at the United Nations in New York. The panelwas held the day after the U.S. State Department released its 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report and the day before the UN commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the “Palermo Convention” – the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, the main international instrument in the fight against human trafficking. TOP: Antonio Maria Costa, Under Secretary General and Executive Director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and Schuster Institute Senior Fellow E. Benjamin Skinner (R) discuss journalists’ role in exposing human trafficking, while former ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr moderates. Schuster Institute Founding Director Florence Graves delivers opening remarks; hundreds attend the panel discussion at the U.N. headquarters in New York City.
2014 Schuster Institute Advisory Board Cynthia Berenson Katie Ford Michele Kessler Jonathan Lavine Julia Ormond George Packer Marianne Pearl Alexandra Schuster Elaine Schuster, founding benefactor Gerald Schuster, founding benefactor Tom Shadyac We are grateful for our Advisory Board’s advice, confidence, and support.
Elaine and Gerald Schuster Founding Benefactors
To find out about the many ways in which you can support the work we do, please contact Beth MacNeill, Chief Development Officer, at bethmacneill@brandeis.edu or (781) 736-3870.
ABOUT THE COVER The first Jew appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis had a revolutionary impact on modern constitutional thought. Even before his tenure as Associate Justice from 1916-1939, his pro bono work earned him a national reputation as “the people’s attorney,” crusading for social and political reform. He is credited with originating the concept of the right to privacy and with pioneering the use of deep research and sociological data to support legal arguments, a model that became known as “the Brandeis Brief.” Andy Warhol selected Justice Brandeis as one of the subjects of his portrait series, Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century. Commissioned by prominent art dealer Ronald Feldman, the series was first displayed in the Jewish Museum in New York in 1980. Last fall, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University displayed the portrait along with the rest of Warhol’s series, which includes portraits of Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. Warhol ornamented his subjects with colorful geometric shapes and neon outlines, thus, as one critic noted, making pop stars out of 21st century intellectuals.
Andy Warhol Louis Brandeis, 1980 From Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century Screenprint on museum board 40 x 32 inches © Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York Courtesy Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA; Gift of Sondra and Melvin Homer, Miami, Florida
© 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Watchdog Reporting: Local, National, Global. www.brandeis.edu/investigate @SchusterInst t 781.736.4953 f 781.736.5030 schusterinstitute@brandeis.edu Brandeis University 415 South Street, MS 043 Waltham, MA 02454-9110
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