Kenneth Roth

Kenneth Roth (born September 23, 1955) is an American attorney, human rights activist, writer. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) from 1993 to 2022.

Early life

Kenneth Roth was born on September 23, 1955 in Elmhurst, Illinois. Roth's parents were Muriel T. Roth and Walter S. Roth, and Walter was a Jewish refugee from Germany. The Jewish family of his father had a butchery in Germany near Frankfurt in the times when Adolf Hitler came to power.

Kenneth Roth grew up in Deerfield, Illinois.

Roth graduated from Brown University in 1977 with a BA in history and received his JD from Yale Law School in 1980.

On June 13, 2011, Roth was married in an Anglican church to Dr. Annie Sparrow.

Career

Roth worked in private practice as a litigator and served as a Assistant United States Attorney for the United States Department of Justice for the Southern District of New York and the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington DC. Roth's career in human rights began inauspiciously. The one human rights course offered at Yale Law School was repeatedly cancelled, and upon graduation he found that jobs in the field were few. As a result, as he worked as a lawyer, he volunteered nights and weekends doing human rights work, focusing on the Soviet imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981.

He joined Human Rights Watch (HRW) in 1987 as deputy director. His initial work centered on Haiti and gradually extended to Cuba and the Middle East, among other places.

Since 1993 (when Aryeh Neier left to become head of George Soros' Open Society Institute), Roth became the executive director of HRW. While he was in the office, the HRW staff increased from 60 to 552; HRW shared Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for banning of anti-personnel mines, helped to establish International Criminal Court and ban children in the military. Roth resigned from HRW on 31 August 2022. After leaving the HRW, Roth said about intention to write a book.

Roth received honorary degrees from Brown University, Bowdoin College, the University of Ottawa, and the American University of Paris. He was a recipient of the Athens Democracy Award, the William Rogers Award from Brown University and the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University. He serves on the Watson Institute Board of Overseers at Brown University, the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin, and the Humanitarian and Development Advisory Panel of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

Criticism and controversies

Under Roth's leadership, Human Rights Watch has been criticized for perceived biases and misconstructions, as well as allegedly funding corruption.

Israel and the Jewish people

Roth is criticized by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor for allegedly being biased against Israel. Professor Gerald M. Steinberg (founder of the Institute for NGO Research, which runs the NGO Monitor project) is a long-time critic of what he refers to as Roth's obsessive targeting of Israel as head of HRW from 1993. In a 2004 ''Jerusalem Post'' article Steinberg rejected Roth's op-ed which accused NGO Monitor of "fictitious allegations of bias" and a "fantasy-based discourse" which "does a deep disservice to Israel". NGO Monitor also criticized Roth for recruiting a staff that hold anti-Zionist views and for his attitude towards antisemitism, as he declined to participate in the Global Forum on Antisemitism. This history was analyzed in detail by Gerald M. Steinberg in "Human Rights Watch's anti-Israel Agenda", published in the journal ''Israel Affairs'' (2021).

In August 2006, during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, Roth wrote a letter to the editor of ''The New York Sun'' in which he criticized the alleged excessive Israeli response to Hezbollah's indiscriminate rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns : "An eye for an eye — or, more accurately in this case, twenty eyes for an eye — may have been the morality of some more primitive moment." Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), accused him of using a "classic anti-Semitic stereotype against Jews". A following editorial in ''The New York Sun'' decried the statement : "To suggest that Judaism is a 'primitive' religion incompatible with contemporary morality is to engage in supersessionism, the de-legitimization of Judaism, the basis of much antisemitism". Georgetown law professor and columnist Rosa Brooks describes this criticism of Roth as an example of reflexive labeling of criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

Roth criticized Israel during the 2008-2009 Gaza War alongside other NGOs, including Amnesty International, Christian Aid, HaMoked, Yesh Din, and others. Anne Herzberg, legal advisor to NGO Monitor, said that Roth was a notable public face for these organizations in arguing that Israel perpetrated war crimes. Herzberg said that Roth distorted a quote made by Israel's foreign Minister Tsipi Livni in his arguments. Herzberg said that Roth uses this quote to argue that indiscriminate killings of Palestinian civilians was ordered by the highest ranks of the IDF. Instead, says Herzberg, the full context of this quote showed that Livni was appealing to a common identity between Arabs and Israeli Jews and to an end of racial acrimony.

In reaction to Richard Goldstone's recantation of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict report, HRW Founder, Robert Bernstein, said to ''The Jerusalem Post'' in April 2011, referring to Roth, that it "is time for him to follow Judge Goldstone's example and issue his own mea culpa."

In 2014, Roth tweeted, "Germans rally against anti-Semitism that flared in Europe in response to Israel's conduct in Gaza war. Merkel joins." Jeffrey Goldberg of ''The Atlantic'' criticized Roth, saying Roth "blame the Jewish state for the violent acts of anti-Semites" and that "it is a universal and immutable rule that the targets of prejudice are not the cause of prejudice." Raphael Magarik disagreed with Goldberg in an opinion for ''The Forward''. Roth also tweeted a controversial advertisement equating the war with "Nazi genocide" followed by the Holocaust tagline "Never again". The professor Deborah Lipstadt described this language as "soft-core denigration of the Holocaust".

An analysis of his tweets by NGO Monitor alleges that Roth shows "significant levels of sarcasm, vitriol, and deep-seated hostility" towards Israel. According to the Jewish newspaper ''Algemeiner Journal'', "Roth has long been noted for his hatred of Israel and his use of antisemitic rhetoric to attack it." In a 2017 opinion for ''The Forward'', Daniel Kohn criticized Roth for establishing a Middle East/North Africa (MENA) team composed of anti-Israel activists. The American Enterprise Institute also criticized his reactions to Palestinian terror attacks against civilians in Israel.

On April 26, 2015, Roth continued to drew criticism for his tweets critical of Israel, which sent humanitarian aid to Nepal during the April 2015 Nepal earthquake. Roth is critical of the blockade of the Gaza strip, which he saw as a humanitarian crisis of "Israel's own making".

In 2021, Roth tweeted: "Antisemitism is always wrong, and it long preceded the creation of Israel, but the surge in UK antisemitic incidents during the recent Gaza conflict gives the lie to those who pretend that the Israeli government's conduct doesn't affect antisemitism." David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee responded to Roth's tweet: "No, antisemitism is always wrong, period. Just as racism is always wrong, period. Coming from an alleged human rights defender, totally & utterly despicable". The Anti-Defamation League said: "blaming Israel for the recent rise in violent antisemitic incidents, instead of blaming the antisemitic actors themselves, is plainly false and offensive" The Community Security Trust said: "Kenneth Roth's tweet is a typical example of how Israel, Jews and antisemitism appear to be treated differently to other types of racism". Following the backlash Roth deleted his post, tweeting "I deleted an earlier tweet because people misinterpreted its wording".

Rwanda genocide

In 2010, Fred Oluoch-Ojiwah of Rwanda's '' New Times'' questioned Roth's impartiality and equated Roth's criticism of Rwanda's human rights record to a "love affair" with the "genocidaires" that carried out the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

In a later article, Oluoch-Ojiwah wrote: "As a western human rights personality oth.. will always fail to understand the intricacies and complexities surrounding the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi. Wrapping it up simplistically the way he has done will only serve to undo the gains already registered in driving the very delicate process of bringing forth a new dispensation in Rwanda and by extension the African Great Lakes region."

Acceptance of donation with non-LGBT rights provision

In 2013, HRW accepted a $487,000 gift from Saudi billionaire Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber. The donation was solicited and managed by Roth. The donor had been the subject of HRW investigation up through 2012 for coercive business practices. Roth agreed to the Saudi demand that HRW not use this donation to support LGBT rights advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa.

In 2020, HRW returned the donation to the Saudi billionaire. Acceptance of this donation by Roth led to internal disputes over whether this violated HRW ethics policies and over Roth's decision-making, though it did not affect Roth's status at HRW.

Denied entry

Egypt

In 2014, the Egyptian government blocked Roth from entering the country. He was traveling to Egypt to release a report on its government's 2013 Rabaa Square massacre of 817 sit-in protesters.

China

In December 2019, China announced unspecified sanctions against HRW and several other NGOs because of links to the Hong Kong democracy movement. In January 2020, Roth said that he was denied entry to Hong Kong. He was planning to launch the organization's World Report, which had an essay saying China is a growing threat to human rights around the world. Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China's foreign ministry, told reporters he would not read the report, accusing Human Rights Watch of distorting the truth and claiming China's human rights situation is “the best it's been in history.” In August 2020, the Chinese government announced that it had imposed unspecified “sanctions” on Roth.

References

External links

Official HRW Biography of Kenneth Roth

Lecture transcript and video of Roth's speech at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice at the University of San Diego, September 2007
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Roth, Kenneth
1955 births
Living people
American human rights activists
American lawyers
American people of German-Jewish descent
Brown University alumni
Human Rights Watch people
People from Elmhurst, Illinois
Yale Law School alumni