Public Policy major Daniel Posthumus publishes with Prof. Kelebogile Zvobgo on race and truth commissions in the US
How has the United States used truth commissions to address racial injustice? Public Policy major Daniel Posthumus and Prof. Kelebogile Zvobgo provide an answer to that question in the first ever student-faculty peer-reviewed publication to come out of the W&M International Justice Lab, which Zvobgo founded in 2019. Their article, entitled "Democratizing Truth: An Analysis of Truth Commissions in the United States," is now available in the International Journal of Transitional Justice. In their article, Posthumus and Zvobgo introduce new quantitative data to analyze 20 past, present, and proposed official US truth commissions, most of
them at the subnational level. The authors find that although their mandates vary considerably, they all address racial injustice, with an emphasis on anti-Indigenous and anti-Black violence. The authors elaborate on trends in the data and discuss the implications for unfolding efforts to reckon with historical and contemporary racial violence and injustice in the United States. Many contgratulations to both authors on this outstanding and important piece of scholarship!
