At the end of the recent High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development held at the UN, the president of the Economic and Social Council convened what for us was certainly one of the most inspirational events of the entire two-week sequence, a session devoted to caregiving and its gendered impacts.
Featuring the newly minted Foreign Minister of Mexico and featuring other presenters from within and outside the UN system, the session made plain both the almost-universal need we humans have for caregiving and the degree to which that responsibility falls on women – women whose labors are often unrecognized, often uncompensated, often inadequately shared with their male partners, often keeping them from developing other talents or joining together to pursue the “power” for which the Foreign Minister advocated in this session.
Needless to say, most of us do not take sufficient time to reflect on our pathways, contexts and conditions as human beings. We certainly do not, as a professor from Buenos Aires chimed in during this UN session, spend sufficient energy in taking down the “patriarchal scaffolding” which inhibits women who choose to be caregivers from achieving both compensation for their families and the dignity and respect their caregiving is surely due. As bombs continue to rain down on communities, as fields lay fallow due to climate change impacts, and as more and more families face grave uncertainties as they take to hostile byways in search of secure places for their children, the need for caregiving is both profound and acute. It cannot be, must not be, the informal, unpaid and unacknowledged province of women alone.
This is background for what is intended to be a tribute to the recently deceased Saul Mendlovitz, one of three co-founders (with Jonathan Dean and Randall Forsberg) of Global Action to Prevent War and Armed Conflict back in 1999. Saul took his leave of GAPW some years ago, and the project has certainly (for better and worse) evolved in his absence, but his legacy, to some significant degree, is embedded in this project as it was in the World Order Models which preceded it and to which I also made contributions.
Beyond his role in Global Action, Saul was a professor at Rutgers Law School and, as his scholarly interests over the years shifted to incorporate a more literary lens, his stature as teacher only grew further. He was a passionate speaker, conveying urgency and more than occasional wit, which drew a number of students to his lectures who had no institutionally coerced reason for being present.
In some ways, Saul’s vision for Global Action was a continuation of his work with the World Order Models Project. His community was a solid, talented group of World Order scholars with all their strengths and limitations. At the same time, the target audience for both the Global Action “Program Statement” and the project for a “UN Emergency Peace Service” a standing, rapid-response service to prevent mass atrocities, was the United Nations itself, an entity often referenced but less often engaged with sufficient depth. Proposals often emanated from GAPW towards a system which was ill-equipped to absorb them due in large measure to what I and others came to believe was an over-reliance on our ideas and an under-reliance on both the often-frustrating politics of implementation and the growing testimonies emanating from communities under siege, people who increasingly demanded a hearing and generally dared to hope for significantly more than that.
As we say often at the UN, policy proposals have life when states adopt them not when NGOs (or academics) introduce them. And, in a system where words are far more plentiful than decision-making authority, what comes “out of our heads” is certainly less impactful than our willingness to swim in the soup of UN politics while endeavoring as best we can to preserve our policy independence.
Especially in the early years of Global Action, Saul was integral to preserving that culture of independence. While his circle of fundraising contacts was relatively small, it was larger than those of the rest of us and he unabashedly and routinely asked for money from those who found his personal vision compelling. There was never enough to manage even a spartan life in New York City but there was surely enough to eschew the sort of arrangements which would require us to support policies which we felt were more likely to result in broken promises than in prospects for concrete caregiving for those facing the end of their capacity and resilience.
From the note which Saul’s daughters sent to some and circulated to others following his death, it was clear that his life and priorities had a profound affect on his family. His vision forged over 99 years of life resonated with them as it did with others. Indeed, for all the limitations inherent in academic worldviews, Saul communicated clearly that there is a need for global values and policy rigor to complement policy negotiation and ensure successful outcomes for people. It is important that we do all we can to prevent violence and indignities of all kinds at a macro level such that the burdens of care at family and community levels can be sustainably reduced. Otherwise, we are left mostly to heal physical and psychological wounds which, if we in the policy world were honest with ourselves, probably never needed to happen in the first instance.
Also noteworthy in Saul’s daughters’ communication is the news that, as his life was coming to an end, Saul swapped out his preoccupations with world order and the ruminations of the New York Times for a more contemplative, introspective engagement consistent with living through (rather than denying) one of the two most profound transitions in human experience. As a man who, in his younger years, often seemed to prefer professional ambition over a concern for caregiving (though he certainly did some of that), who frequently indulged in competition with far-flung colleagues to the exclusion of solidarity with those in his more immediate professional circle, it was reassuring to think of Saul engaging in that urgent, poignant, honest, self-directed exploration as his earthly life over nearly a century was nearing its end.
I and any number of others would surely have wished to know what he discovered in those meditative moments. It would have been a fitting last lesson for Saul to have left for those of us still struggling to discern and to care.
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