According to 2003 Carnegie Scholar Darius Rejali, human rights monitoring doesn't necessarily stop torture. Rejali, a professor of political science at Reed College and an internationally recognized expert on modern torture, says it simply causes torturers to use techniques that leave no physical scars.
Rejali’s new book Torture and Democracy (Princeton University Press) is a comprehensive and unnerving examination of modern torture. He takes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electro-torture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and Europe.
Listen to podcasts of Darius Rejali on WNYC or at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.
The Carnegie Scholars program allows independent-minded thinkers to pursue original projects oriented toward catalyzing intellectual discourse as well as guiding more focused and pragmatic policy discussions. Scholars are selected each year not only for their originality and proven intellectual capacity, but for their demonstrated ability to communicate their ideas in ways that can catalyze public discourse.
