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Laura Lederer
Laura J. Lederer (born 1951) is a pioneer in the work to stop human trafficking.[citation needed] She is a legal scholar and former Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons in the Office for Democracy and Global Affairs of the United States Department of State. She has also been an activist against human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and hate speech. Lederer is founder of The Protection Project, a legal research institute at Johns Hopkins University devoted to combating trafficking in persons.
Lederer was born in the Detroit area, to parents Natalie and Creighton Lederer, a civil engineer[citation needed] and later Detroit Commissioner of Buildings and Safety in the Coleman Young administration. She was born into a multifaith household, with a Jewish father and Lutheran mother who were practicing Unitarian Universalists, and studied comparative religion as an undergraduate at University of Michigan. As part of her undergraduate work, she spent two years studying under and working for David Noel Freedman, and graduated with a BA magna cum laude in 1975.
In the mid-1970s she was an activist and leader in the violence against women movement. In 1977 she helped found and then directed the first women's anti-pornography organization in the country. Also in 1977, became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. She founded and directed The Protection Project, a legal research and human rights institute at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997. There, she collected and translated foreign national law on involuntary servitude, slavery, trafficking in persons and related issues and created an international database housing over 3,000 statutes from 190 countries. She also tracked global routes, patterns, and trends in human trafficking and published the first Human Rights Report on Trafficking in Persons. In 2000, she moved The Protection Project to Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where it is housed today.
During the drafting of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, from 1998 to 2000, she served as a witness in hearings held by Representatives Chris Smith and Sam Gjendenson in the House of Representatives International Subcommittee on Human Rights and the late Senator Paul Wellstone and Sam Brownback in the Senate, testifying on the global nature and scope of the problem of trafficking in persons. She brought trafficking victims from over a dozen countries to testify in Congress. In 1998, she also played a vital role in bringing together a new bi-partisan anti-trafficking coalition of women's groups such as Equality Now, and faith-based groups such as The Salvation Army, and the National Association of Evangelicals. This coalition played an important role in the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
In 2001, as Deputy Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State she helped stand up the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State. From 2002 to 2007, she served as Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons to Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula J. Dobriansky. In that capacity she advised the Under Secretary on policy formulation and development, program creation and implementation, and long-range planning for the Office for Global Affairs. She represented the Under Secretary at high-level national and international meetings, spoke extensively as a recognized expert at governmental, inter-governmental, non-governmental, academic and other conferences, seminars, and meetings. She also advised the Ambassador-at-Large on Trafficking in Persons and other key governmental officials, as well as serving as liaison to civil society.
Currently Laura Lederer is affiliated with the anti-trafficking NGOs Global Centurion and Triple S Network.
She is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law Center, where teaches (with Professor Mohamad Mattar) a course entitled, "International Trafficking in Persons," a JD/LLM class that covers U.S federal and state law on human trafficking; foreign national anti-trafficking law; and international instruments addressing human trafficking. The course also examines the global scope of the trafficking problem including trafficking routes and patterns; the similarities and differences between sex and labor trafficking; the relationship of human trafficking to drug and arms trafficking; trafficking and terrorism; the public health implications of trafficking; child sex tourism; trafficking and international migration; transnational issues in trafficking such as international peacekeeping, corruption, money-laundering, international adoption, and more.
In late 1976, she accompanied a friend to a San Francisco conference on violence against women. A display at the conference included images from magazine advertising, softcore pornography, and hardcore pornography, including child pornography. Lederer stated in a later interview: "You saw the influence of the really hard-core images, back through the soft-core to the mainstream. Images were repeated. That's how I got involved. It kind of clicked." Several participants in the conference proposed to keep meeting and form an organization devoted to protesting violent images of women. In January 1977, this organization was started, which after several name changes became Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM). Lederer signed on as the organization's national coordinator and editor of its newsletter.
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Laura Lederer
Laura J. Lederer (born 1951) is a pioneer in the work to stop human trafficking.[citation needed] She is a legal scholar and former Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons in the Office for Democracy and Global Affairs of the United States Department of State. She has also been an activist against human trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and hate speech. Lederer is founder of The Protection Project, a legal research institute at Johns Hopkins University devoted to combating trafficking in persons.
Lederer was born in the Detroit area, to parents Natalie and Creighton Lederer, a civil engineer[citation needed] and later Detroit Commissioner of Buildings and Safety in the Coleman Young administration. She was born into a multifaith household, with a Jewish father and Lutheran mother who were practicing Unitarian Universalists, and studied comparative religion as an undergraduate at University of Michigan. As part of her undergraduate work, she spent two years studying under and working for David Noel Freedman, and graduated with a BA magna cum laude in 1975.
In the mid-1970s she was an activist and leader in the violence against women movement. In 1977 she helped found and then directed the first women's anti-pornography organization in the country. Also in 1977, became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. She founded and directed The Protection Project, a legal research and human rights institute at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997. There, she collected and translated foreign national law on involuntary servitude, slavery, trafficking in persons and related issues and created an international database housing over 3,000 statutes from 190 countries. She also tracked global routes, patterns, and trends in human trafficking and published the first Human Rights Report on Trafficking in Persons. In 2000, she moved The Protection Project to Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where it is housed today.
During the drafting of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, from 1998 to 2000, she served as a witness in hearings held by Representatives Chris Smith and Sam Gjendenson in the House of Representatives International Subcommittee on Human Rights and the late Senator Paul Wellstone and Sam Brownback in the Senate, testifying on the global nature and scope of the problem of trafficking in persons. She brought trafficking victims from over a dozen countries to testify in Congress. In 1998, she also played a vital role in bringing together a new bi-partisan anti-trafficking coalition of women's groups such as Equality Now, and faith-based groups such as The Salvation Army, and the National Association of Evangelicals. This coalition played an important role in the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
In 2001, as Deputy Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State she helped stand up the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the U.S. Department of State. From 2002 to 2007, she served as Senior Advisor on Trafficking in Persons to Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Paula J. Dobriansky. In that capacity she advised the Under Secretary on policy formulation and development, program creation and implementation, and long-range planning for the Office for Global Affairs. She represented the Under Secretary at high-level national and international meetings, spoke extensively as a recognized expert at governmental, inter-governmental, non-governmental, academic and other conferences, seminars, and meetings. She also advised the Ambassador-at-Large on Trafficking in Persons and other key governmental officials, as well as serving as liaison to civil society.
Currently Laura Lederer is affiliated with the anti-trafficking NGOs Global Centurion and Triple S Network.
She is also an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown Law Center, where teaches (with Professor Mohamad Mattar) a course entitled, "International Trafficking in Persons," a JD/LLM class that covers U.S federal and state law on human trafficking; foreign national anti-trafficking law; and international instruments addressing human trafficking. The course also examines the global scope of the trafficking problem including trafficking routes and patterns; the similarities and differences between sex and labor trafficking; the relationship of human trafficking to drug and arms trafficking; trafficking and terrorism; the public health implications of trafficking; child sex tourism; trafficking and international migration; transnational issues in trafficking such as international peacekeeping, corruption, money-laundering, international adoption, and more.
In late 1976, she accompanied a friend to a San Francisco conference on violence against women. A display at the conference included images from magazine advertising, softcore pornography, and hardcore pornography, including child pornography. Lederer stated in a later interview: "You saw the influence of the really hard-core images, back through the soft-core to the mainstream. Images were repeated. That's how I got involved. It kind of clicked." Several participants in the conference proposed to keep meeting and form an organization devoted to protesting violent images of women. In January 1977, this organization was started, which after several name changes became Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM). Lederer signed on as the organization's national coordinator and editor of its newsletter.