Audrey Comstock

The helpful and painful editing tool of Word Read Aloud strikes again

State Department slashes its annual reports on human rights Required by Congress, the reports no longer single out things like rigged elections or sexual violence against children as human rights violations.

Bit by bit our standards of human rights are implicitly and explicitly wearing away.

"The State Department...drastically reduce(d) the types of government repression and abuse that the United States under President Trump deems worthy of criticism."

www.npr.org/2025/08/12/n...

ASU leads the US for impact with UN Sustainable Development Goals | ASU News For the sixth year in a row — and bucking a downward trend among American universities — Arizona State University is the No. 1 institution in the U.S. and in the top 10 globally for work toward the Un...

Proud of ASU's work on the UN SDGs! "For the sixth year ...ASU is the No. 1 institution in the US & in the top 10 globally for work toward the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, Times Higher Education announced today in its 2025 University Impact Ranking." news.asu.edu/20250617-uni...

Digging back into email after traveling and glad to find an R&R waiting for me there

nice graphic!

How's everyone here feeling about APSA and ISA travel (and other major conferences) these days? I plan at this point to go to both but am in a privileged travel situation - though my uni has reduced travel approval and funding at least in some parts, so that will be a factor.

International students belong. My employer (ASU) and grad school (Cornell) have great charter/mottos about the importance of inclusion at universities.
#anypersonanystudy #includenotexclude

the % saying "no one" is striking

thank you!

thank you!

thank you friend :)

Happy to share I am tenured& promoted at ASU. I feel very privileged as a human rights scholar, particularly in this current climate, to have my work recognized in this way at a university championing inclusive education. I'm grateful to do what I do where I do & looking forward to what lies ahead.

4 more days to apply for the 2025 New Era Workshop!
NEW is an annual three-day training program for PhD students in international affairs and related disciplines, held September 25-27, 2025 at the University of Denver! Applications can be found on our website. Share with your networks!

University center/initiative/program/etc. directors, what social media (if any) are you finding effective for those accounts these days?

I'm so sorry and outraged to hear about this and the continued harm being carried out in the research world

I'm so sorry and outraged to hear this happened!

An important thread to read and share

That's terrible!

World Health Organization agrees legally binding pandemic treaty The agreement is designed to ensure more cooperation between nations in the event of another pandemic.

"It is only the second time in the WHO's 75-year history that an international agreement of this type has been reached – the first being a tobacco control deal in 2003."

Looking forward to reading more into the completed agreement today

www.bbc.com/news/article...

thanks Bree! It was a pleasure meeting your through it and wonderful to stay in touch since then :)

just finished submitting my ISA reimbursement forms to my uni and got my APSA acceptance. Let's hope that there will be some better news for uni funding, reserach, etc. come APSA time for us all :)

Derogations, democratic backsliding, and international human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic Did states misuse international legal emergency provisions during the COVID-19 pandemic to justify human rights abuse, or did they follow international human rights law? Many governments restricted citizens’ freedom of movement, association, and assembly during the crisis, raising questions about states’ commitments to international human rights law. Some states used derogations to communicate temporary suspension of international legal provisions in a proportional and nondiscriminatory manner; others did not. We explored the dynamics of democratic backsliding and derogation use during the pandemic. We found that backsliding states were more likely to issue human rights treaty derogations. These derogations had mitigating effects once issued. Backsliding states that issued derogations were more likely to communicate restrictions and less likely to issue abusive and discriminatory policy during the pandemic. Derogations helped temper abuse in states not experiencing backsliding. However, derogations did not always protect against abuse and media transparency in backsliding states. These results lend support to the use of flexibility mechanisms in international law and find that most states did not use emergency derogations to heighten human rights violations. The study contributes to the understanding of how international legal measures may help mitigate elements of democratic backsliding during times of crisis.

Stacked fuzzy bar charts showing the results of ordered logistic regression models across a range of human rights violations in backsliding and non-backsliding countries

Hey! Latest paper by @suparnac.bsky.social and @audreycomstock7.bsky.social and me is live at the Journal of Human Rights: "Derogations, democratic backsliding, and international human rights during the COVID-19 pandemic"
doi.org/10.1080/1475...

Preprint here: www.andrewheiss.com/research/art...

US joins Russia to vote against UN resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine | CNN Politics The United States joined Russia to vote against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine Monday in a stunning shift from years of US policy.

"The vote against the Ukrainian and European-backed resolution saw the US at odds with its longtime European allies and instead aligned with the aggressor in the war on the three-year anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine."

www.cnn.com/2025/02/24/p...

Sick kiddo at home, midterm grading, and an ISA paper that. . .

yikes

Finally booked my ISA trip, looking forward to seeing folks in Chicago!

not sure if it is AI or just lack of attention, but students have incorrectly cited a chapter I wrote so far as by S. Comstock, M. Comstock, being a journal article in Law&Policy (& there were even made up page#s!), being published by Oxford Univ Press (was CUP),& being published in 2002 & 2006

I never learn - working on my annual review submission on the last day. Turns out I prefer researching, teaching, and committee work to writing about my researching, teaching, and committee work and entering it into a clunky system

Got univ approval to use a univ seed grant to travel to NYC in Feb for UN archive &interview research (abuse &accountability in peacekeeping).Looking forward to it & LMK if any tips, contacts, etc. come to mind. Might have time for coffee/ talk too if interest to you/your prog🙂

For Grad IL/IO class this week the theme was why states work (and don't work) through IOs. Always relevant sometimes depressing