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Newsletter
Is There Slavery In Your Supermarket? Read>
Palm Oil Industry Tied to Forced & Child Labor in Indonesia... Read>
Our Investigations
Schuster Institute Investigations>
Links to Human Rights & Social Justice Reporting
- Human Trafficking & Modern-Day Slavery
- Food, Health, Environment
- Fraud & Corruption in International Adoptions
- Criminal Justice
- Public Secrecy About Child Sexual Abuse & Freedom of Information Law
- DNA Access Law for Massachusetts Prisoners
- Sexual Harassment of Teens at Work
- Government & Corporate Power
- See articles listed by topic>
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Commentary
What's Next for the Gay-Rights Movement? E.J. Graff, 9/27, The Daily Beast/Newsweek.
When Will Boston Be Ready For A Mayor Of Color? Phillip Martin, 9/25, WGBH Boston Public Radio.
CDC Threat Report: Yes, Agricultural Antibiotics Play a Role in Drug Resistance, Maryn McKenna, 9/17, Wired Science.
Brandeis's Video About the Schuster Institute
Awards & Honors
Phillip Martin, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow and Senior Investigative Reporter at WGBH Boston Public Radio has been honored for his reporting of "Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok," which received a Gold Radio Winner Award for Best Investigative Report and an UNDPI Gold, also for Best Investigative Report.
The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has given their 2013 June Roth Memorial Book Award to Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Maryn McKenna for her book "Superbug."
Tracie McMillan, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow, has received a 2013 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism for her book "The American Way of Eating."
"Tijuana Greyhounds Find New Lives North of the Border" by Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Erin Siegal and co-author Eros Hoagland has received a W3 Gold Award for Web Video in the Public Service category.
"The American Way of Eating" by Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Tracie McMillan has been selected as a 2013 Books for Better Life Award in the green category.
2013 Fellows' Books
"An Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos," Karen Coates & Jerry Redfern, September 2013, ThingsAsian Press.
"The Business of Baby: What Doctors Don't Tell You, What Corporations Try to Sell You, and How to Put Your Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Before Their Bottom Line," Jennifer Margulis, April 16, Scribner.
"This Way More Better: Stories and Photos from Asia's Back Roads," Karen Coates & Jerry Redfern, March 13, ThingsAsian Press.
"The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism," Trevor Aaronson, January, Ig Publishing.
Affiliations
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© 2008-2013 Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 02454. All rights reserved.
The Front Page
New Schuster Institute Reporting
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Is There Slavery In Your Supermarket? 7/22, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism. |
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Indonesia's Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses, E. Benjamin Skinner, 7/18, Bloomberg Businessweek. |
Recent Reporting by
Schuster Institute Senior Fellows
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NEW Letter from Kenya: Surviving Westgate, James Verini, 9/27, The New Yorker. |
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NEW Terror at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, James Verini, 9/22, The New Yorker. |
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NEW Golar Richie Takes Third, Questions What Went Wrong, Phillip Martin, 9/25, WGBH Boston Public Radio. |
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NEW Ed Davis Calls For Boston Police Hiring Overhaul In Resignation, Phillip Martin, 9/24, WGBH Boston Public Radio. |
| In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and because slavery persists today, we are joining WGBH Boston Public Radio and PBS's American Experience to present stories of slavery now and then. | |
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Special Report: Human Trafficking / Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok. In an eight-part broadcast on WGBH Boston Public Radio (89.7 FM) beginning Jan. 8, Phillip Martin, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow and WGBH Senior Reporter, will trace human trafficking routes from East Asia to the Northeast Corridor of the United States. |
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PBS’s The Abolitionists. In a three-part series premiering Jan. 8, PBS's American Experience chronicles abolitionists Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimké, and their efforts to turn a "despised fringe movement against chattel slavery into a force that literally changed the nation." |
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The Role of Journalists in Exposing Slavery. Authors Adam Hochschild and Brooke Kroeger, who is also a Schuster Institute Senior Fellow, make the case for human rights journalism and undercover reporting in informing the public about slavery. |
Human Rights
& Social Justice Reporting
Human Trafficking
& Modern-Day Slavery
Slavery has not ended. Today, human beings are enslaved all over the world—including in the United States. For example, they are forced to work in agriculture, fishing, gravel pits, mines, restaurants, as domestic servants, and in brothels.
Is There Slavery In Your Supermarkets? 7/22, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
Indonesia's Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses, E. Benjamin Skinner, 7/18, Bloomberg Businessweek.
In a nine-month investigation, the Schuster Institute's team of reporters followed the intra-country migration of workers in the palm oil industry in Indonesia. "Indonesia's Palm Oil Industry Rife With Human-Rights Abuses," the resulting story published on July 18, 2013 in Bloomberg Businessweek, highlights the harrowing and unexpected journey one man took from freedom to slavery and back, and how few consumers, especially those in the burgeoning markets of China and India, are unaware of workers' plight.
Duped, Sold into Prostitution, then Rescued: A Vietnamese Girl and the Man Who Saved Her, Phillip Martin, 5/20, PRI's The World.
2013 Gold Radio Winner and
UNDPI Gold Award Winning Broadcast:
Underground Trade: From Boston to Bangkok, Phillip Martin, WGBH Boston Public Radio.
- Part 1: Hiding in Plain Site, 1/8
- Schuster Related Resources: Massage Parlors As Fronts for Forced Prostitution
- Part 2: Human Trafficking: The Route Through Queens, 1/10
- Schuster Related Resources: Human Trafficking in Migration
- Part 3: The Business of Trafficking, 1/15
- Schuster Related Resources: Sex Tourism & Sex Trafficking
- Part 4: One Town In Thailand, 1/17
- Schuster Related Resources: Sex Tourism, Sex Trafficking, Pattaya, Thailand
- Part 5: Taken Into China, 1/22
- Schuster Related Resources: Human Trafficking at the Vietnam-China Border
- Part 6: Trading in Shame, 1/25
- Schuster Related Resources: Sexual Exploitation & Shame in Vietnamese Culture
- Part 7: Modern-Day Slavery in America, 1/29
- Part 8: What Now?, 1/31
Call it Trafficking, E.J. Graff, January 3, 2013, The American Prospect.
Human Trafficking Still A Problem In The U.S., interview with Schuster Institute Senior Fellow & WBGH Senior Reporter Phillip Martin, former Open Society Fellow Noy Thrupkaew, News-Press writer Amy Bennett Williams, September 26, 2012, Talk of the Nation, NPR.
"Commentary: Did slaves catch your seafood?"
Sophie Elsner, April 12, 2012, GlobalPost.
"The Fishing Industry's Cruelest Catch,"
E. Benjamin Skinner, February 20, 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek. Learn more: Slavery In Your Seafood
How U.S. Budget Cuts Prolong Global Slavery,"
E. Benjamin Skinner, June 28, 2011, Time.com.
More about human trafficking and modern-day slavery>Food, Health, Environment
Do Doctors Put Corporations Before Mothers and Babies? 5/9/2013, Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
What You Don't Know About Episiotomies Can Hurt You, Jennifer Margulis, 1/27, Motherlode, the New York Times.
Fecal Transplants: A Clinical Trial Confirms How Well They Work, Maryn McKenna, 1/17, Wired Science.
UK 'Horseburger' Scandal: Did The Meat Originate In The US? Maryn McKenna, 1/16, Wired Science.
Almost-Untreatable Gonorrhea: Proof That It’s HereMaryn McKenna, 1/11, Wired Science.
Fracking's Health Calamities Left to Fester, Jan Goodwin, September 20, 2012, Truthout.
One Woman's Mission to Immunize Children Worldwide with the Polio Vaccine, Jan Goodwin, July 2012, Real Simple.
FERN/ABC Report Reveals Link Between Bladder Infections and Overuse of Antibiotics
in Chicken, July 11, 2012, Food & Environment Reporting Network, reported by Maryn McKenna.
The Real Danger in America: Hospital Birth, Jennifer Margulis, July 10, 2012, BlogHer.
Why Your Hamburger Hates America, Tracie McMillan, June 29, 2012, The Washington Post.
Fraud & Corruption in International Adoptions
Fatal Adoption, E.J. Graff, 2/22, Slate.com.
Call it Trafficking, E.J. Graff, 1/3, The American Prospect.
The Stolen Makeni Children, E.J. Graff, 1/11/2012, Slate.com.
In April, 2012 a presidential commission in Sierra Leone sided with birth families of children they say were adopted internationally without their knowledge or consent.
Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for the Truth, Erin Siegal, Beacon Press, May 8, 2012.
Siegal does a fantastic job of breaking down a complicated story, and gives voice to the distinct players involved in Guatemalan children being adopted by US families. “Finding Fernanda” is a gripping read that offers glimpses of hope in what was an otherwise heartbreaking system.
—The Christian Science Monitor,
November 28, 2011
Mexico Adoption Bust Reveals Vast Child Trafficking Ring, Erin Siegal, February 29, 2012, Huffington Post.
Adoption Illegalities in Guatemala: What the U.S. Government Knew, and What Was Said and Done, with excerpts from Erin Siegal's new book "the U.S. Embassy Cables: Adoption Fraud in Guatemala, 1987-2010."
The Makeni Children, August 9, 2011, Slate.com.
In a riveting three-part series, Schuster Senior Fellow E.J. Graff investigates the adoption of two children from Sierra Leone, whose American families learned—13 years after the adoption—that birth families were looking for their children.
More about fraud and corruption in international adoption>
Criminal Justice
Prisoners Rule, James Verini, November issue 2012, Foreign Policy.
Public Secrecy About Child Sexual Abuse
For four years Schuster Senior Fellow Hella Winston’s reporting in The New York Jewish Week kept alive the issue of child sexual abuse in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
Read Winston's reports>
DNA Access Law for Massachusetts Prisoners
Failing the DNA Test, Michael Blanding and Lindsay Markel, November 20, 2011, The Boston Globe Magazine.
Schuster Senior Fellow Michael Blanding and Assistant Director Lindsay Markel teamed with the Boston Globe Magazine to investigate why, at the time, Massachusetts was one of only two states without a DNA access bill, and what that means for prisoners who claim that DNA testing will help prove their innocence. Since the publication of "Failing the Test," Massachusetts has passed the DNA access bill into law. Read more>
More about DNA access, the causes of wrongful conviction, and the Justice Brandeis Innocence Project>
Government & Corporate Power
Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Trevor Aaronson asks the question: Are We Catching Terrorists? Or Creating Them? His new book "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism" (Ig Publishing) is in bookstores on January 15, 2013.
Reporting from Far Rockaway, New York following Hurricane Sandy, Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Hella Winston examines the mismatch of services to needs of the people, and discovers a local youth group stepping in to help with recovery.
Injustice in Political Asylum is Schuster Institute Senior Fellow Jan Goodwin's focus in Broken Promises: Seeking Political Asylum in America, Ladies Home Journal, April 2010.
Torture survivors and rape victims seeking political asylum are locked up alongside hardened criminals in U.S. prisons, where they often remain for months, even years.
Goodwin won three journalism awards for this investigative report. More investigative articles by Jan Goodwin>
Sexual Harassment of Teens at Work
Few people understand how aggressive and hostile sexual harassment can be. And few teens are adequately prepared or instructed about how to face it at their after-school, weekend, or summer jobs.
Summer Jobs Often Lead to Harassment, ABC's WCVB-TV, July 10, 2009.
Is Your Daughter Safe at Work? PBS Now/Schuster Institute, Feb. 20, 2009.
Is Your Daughter Safe at Work? Good Housekeeping, July 2007.
More about sexual harassment of teenagers in the workplace>
