COSMOS Book Review

Literature

Jun 22

Written By Guest

Reversing the Rivers

By William F. Schulz

Reviewed by Gregg Kvistad

Date June 28, 2023

William F. Schulz
Reversing the Rivers: A Memoir of History, Hope, and Human Rights
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023, 280 pp.

Bill Schulz, now a resident of Cape Ann, has just published an extraordinary book, Reversing the Rivers: A Memoir of History, Hope, and Human Rights, with University of Pennsylvania Press. It is a memoir that focuses mainly on his 12-year tenure as the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA.

On any scale, Schulz’s job at Amnesty was one of the hardest imaginable. Exactly how hard—and interesting, exasperating, gratifying, and sometimes absurd and humorous—he reveals in a beautifully written volume that speaks clearly and poignantly to the reader. While by no means an easy read, the book should have wide appeal, from human rights academics to the general public interested in and caring about what’s going on in the world, including in the U.S. Parts of it feel like we’re in a pretty serious seminar led by a very good instructor; other parts with stories about celebrities Amnesty courted could almost be a beach read (but maybe on a cloudy day). All of it reminds us of what brings us together, what obligations we owe to others, and how excruciatingly complex the world is that we navigate—even when we head an organization of stellar reputation that opens doors for us to do good.

A 2001 demonstration by Amnesty International USA protesting the sale of ‘blood diamonds’ to finance the brutal war in Sierra Leone.

Schulz holds a doctorate of ministry and is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. He served as minister in Bedford, MA, between 1975 and 1978, and then as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston between 1978 and 1993. He became executive director of Amnesty International USA in 1994 and remained there until retiring in 2006. The author of nine other books, including one on religious humanism before he joined Amnesty, Schulz has a background that seems ideally suited for the Amnesty job. But he notes that nothing could have fully prepared him for the hideous cases of abuse his organization investigated, or for face-to-face negotiations with despots and killers, or for travel that consumed 60-80% of every week for 12 years, or even for the less taxing, but time-consuming schmoozing of Hollywood stars. Yet he managed to do all this and much more and end his book with the observation, “How lucky I have been.”

Amnesty International's Original Charter

Reversing the Rivers is remarkably well researched and well written. It is packed with fascinating vignettes, some of which are upsetting, though they need to be read. The book recounts Schulz’s daily job of dealing with practitioners of genocide, torturers, prisoners of conscience, and human rights abuses in Liberia, Northern Ireland, Darfur, Sudan, China, the United States, and elsewhere. The job also allowed him to hang out with celebrities, which was no doubt a bit of a relief, but, after the glitz (which he seems to have navigated very well), this was about linking those celebrities with Amnesty and driving the funding that was Amnesty’s lifeblood. Along the way, the book is replete with penetrating ruminations on topics like the minds of torturers, the nature of evil, the death penalty, and using force to stop force.

Bill Schulz introduces the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Dalai Lama.

Amnesty International’s original focus when it was founded in London in 1961 was helping prisoners of conscience. The scope expanded over time to address other types of human rights violations globally, and that shift complicated Amnesty’s mission. The shift in scope broadened the relevant players, often putting Amnesty squarely into conflict with not just human rights criminals, but also with policy actors and leaders of nation-states not directly perpetrating crimes but walking a complicated foreign policy line, often including the United States. At other times, however, the United States was not just complicit, but an undeniable human rights violator.

The Refocus after September 11, 2001

Schulz’s treatment of the United States’ modern human rights record is candid and probing. For American readers, it is perhaps the most important account in the book. In Schulz’s view the U.S. doesn’t have clean hands, but they’re also not filthy. Schulz applauds the constitutional protection of rights in the U.S., and the uneven but real progress in expanding those rights—as well as the not trivial fact that he was never threatened by U.S. state officials because of his work. He also vigorously condemns the terrorist attacks that Americans have suffered.

The aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, however, defined Schulz’s remaining five years at Amnesty, which were very difficult. His work became focused on addressing the U.S. government’s actions at U.S. military bases at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. The U.S. government refused to charge prisoners kept at these sites either as terrorist criminals or as enemy soldiers. Not legally charged—and thus without formal legal status—hundreds of Muslim men were captured, detained indefinitely (some are still held at Guantanamo Bay), and many were tortured. How America could possibly sanction torture, and how it could be stopped, consumed Schulz during this period.

The Tools of Soft Power

Bill Schulz sharing a laugh with Jimmy Carter at a 1999 meeting of the Amnesty board at the Carter Center.

Amnesty takes no money from any government, and whatever comes in from the private sector is rigorously vetted. It is overwhelmingly an individual donor funded organization that relies on millions of people. Driving Schulz’s mingling with the likes of Lauren Bacall, George Clooney, Richard Gere, and Patrick Stewart was the enormous asymmetry of Amnesty’s resources relative to those available to rights abusers, which are usually nation-states. Amnesty’s work can in principle help every person on earth; yet it has a tiny and not dependable annual budget, it can make no laws, it has no tools of deterrence, and it has no weapons to enforce anything. Its intervention is at best uncomfortable, often detested by people, not just perpetrators, both left and right, both detractors and otherwise supporters, depending upon the issue.

In short, Amnesty’s only resources are the tools of soft power, and much of Schulz’s job was to develop that power and apply it in inventive and effective ways. This is where the celebrities come in. Schulz was clear-eyed about the advantage of notable people in politics, sports, film, music, and the national media affiliating with Amnesty. While not always familiar territory for a Unitarian Universalist minister, Schulz boldly went after them. He shares a number of stories about how these people helped Amnesty.

Mohammad Ali and Ted Kennedy

One of the most endearing describes Schulz noticing Muhammad Ali and his wife at an airport gate about to board the same flight that he was taking. Schulz saw this as an opportunity, and it wasn’t for an autograph. When seated in the plane, Schulz took out a business card, wrote a note to “The Greatest,” and asked the flight attendant to deliver it to where he was sitting in first class. No spoilers here, but the outcome was an extraordinary marketing campaign for Amnesty. Another touching account was Schulz’s description of his friendship with Ted Kennedy, which was a very different story. It developed beyond the Amnesty link and was deeply personal and lasted for years. It overlapped with yet another Kennedy family tragedy. The foundation of the relationship was the humanist ministerial core that Bill Schulz never lost while at Amnesty, and that Ted Kennedy came to depend on.

Bill Schulz ends his book with a discussion of “The Question” that he was asked repeatedly during his tenure at Amnesty. People he ran into regularly asked him some version of “How can you stand it?” That is, how can you stand the endless litany of horrors that you encounter every day, and that you are supposed to try to do something about? After all, even Amnesty’s victories, Schulz noted, felt muted. Rarely tidy and dramatic, they were more like “gifts of long-term bonds that take years to mature.” How this deeply committed humanist not only stood it, but thrived at Amnesty, is answered in a moving last chapter, “Despite Cruelty,” which I will not summarize. It bears a close read, maybe even at the beach on a sunny, calm, early morning. Do it and you will likely feel a bit better about the world.