UUSC President Steps Down to Accept Major Human Rights Position at Harvard University

Charlie Clements, UUSC president for the past six-and-a-half years, has stepped down from his role as the organization's chief executive officer to accept a new position as head of a major human rights research and teaching institution at Harvard University.

Clements assumed his new responsibilities as executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government in February 2010.

UUSC Board of Trustees Chair Rev. John Gibbons said that while he is disappointed that Clements is leaving, it is completely understandable why the Carr Center would want him in its primary executive leadership position.

"Charlie has transformed UUSC so positively," said Gibbons. "By attracting a world-class staff, smartly strategizing and by passionately engaging our membership, Charlie has made UUSC a hotbed of human rights activism. He has put UUSC at the go-to center of local, national, and international justice-making."

Gibbons said that because of the work that Clements has done to grow and strengthen UUSC, he is confident the organization will continue to attract robust leadership. He said the board is working to ensure that during the transition process, UUSC stays strong and effective in its commitment to program partners and mission.

Clements said he does not consider his move as an end to his formal relationship with UUSC, but rather as a transition that will open exciting new opportunities for both the Service Committee and the Carr Center to advance mutually supportive missions.

"I was not seeking another position and had thought I would be at UUSC until I retired. However, when Harvard came recruiting there were several matters of great excitement," said Clements. "These include the convening power of Harvard; the intellectual crossroads of the world that the JFK School of Government seems to be; and the hope to create collaborations between UUSC and Harvard as well as between the Carr Center and some of UUSC's partners around the world."

Clements said he is especially proud that during his tenure UUSC has "stood tall" its Unitarian Universalist identity. This includes expanding our dynamic relationship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, UU ministers, and UU congregations on such major UUSC programs as Guest at Your Table, Justice Sunday, JustJourneys, and JustWorks camps. Among the most visible joint initiatives were responses to such major natural and man-made disasters as the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast, and the continuing genocide in Darfur.

"The organization has a stronger foundation than ever," he said. There is a clear mission with a strong program focus and amazing partners around the world. UUSC has a remarkable staff, a well functioning board, a new building, and a solid financial base despite the economy."

Rory Stewart, Harvard professor for the practice of human rights and faculty director of the Carr Center, said he is delighted that Clements agreed to join the Carr Center in this key leadership position.

"Charlie is uniquely qualified to join the Center's leadership with his unparalleled human rights experience, his distinguished wide-ranging international career, and his decades of leadership of nonprofits," said Stewart.

"With the benefit of his direction and guidance, the Center is well positioned to enter a new and exciting phase in its development, as it continues to strengthen its contribution to academic discourse and policy debate on the most pressing human rights and humanitarian concerns."

During Clements's tenure as UUSC's president, the organization doubled its membership, moved to much larger headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., and gained widespread respect for its expertise in the four major program focus areas of environmental justice, economic justice, civil liberties, and rights in humanitarian crises.

Clements, a widely respected human rights activist and public health physician, served as president of UUSC since August 2003. Prior to taking the position at UUSC, he served as executive director of Border WaterWorks, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the El Paso Community Foundation, which assisted small U.S. communities along the border without running water or sewers to construct such desperately needed infrastructure.

Throughout the years, Clements has faced several moral dilemmas that shaped his life. As a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Academy who had flown more than 50 missions in the Vietnam War, he decided the war was immoral and refused to fly missions in support of the invasion of Cambodia. Later, as a newly trained physician, he chose to work in the midst of El Salvador's civil war, where the villages he served were bombed, rocketed, or strafed by some of the same aircraft in which he had previously trained.

For two years in the late 1980s, Clements served as director of human rights education at UUSC, leading a number of congressional fact-finding delegations to Central America. In 1997, as president of Physicians for Human Rights, he participated both in the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony and the treaty signing for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. Clements is author of Witness to War and the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary of the same title.