The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives

I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.

If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.

If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies.

The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.

That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.