Angela Wu Howard, International Human Rights Law Fellow

In this conversation, Tina Ramirez, Hardwired Global founder, and president, and Angela Wu Howard, a distinguished international human rights lawyer, discuss the dangers of government overreach and its impact on the freedom of religion for people of all faiths and none. They remember their teamwork at the United Nations rallying nations to vote down defamation of religion resolutions, which covertly protected harmful blasphemy laws, especially in Muslim-majority countries. They remember their work advocating for Dalits in India—those treated as the lowest caste of India society—who suffered extreme violence due to their religion and poverty. Angela outlines key fundamental religious freedom laws in the U.S., the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, to provide context for landmark United States Supreme Court cases involving the violation of the freedom of conscience as it concerned the rights of prisoners, employment rights, healthcare services, and public health in a pandemic. 

Watch the interview on Hardwired's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/cL7TEpk-tCs

Angela Wu Howard is a leading international human rights lawyer. She is the International Law Fellow at the Becket Institute, a public interest law firm that defends religious liberty cases. She has testified, lectured, and worked on religious freedom cases before United Nations tribunals, the U.S. Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the domestic courts in countries around the world. She established the academic project Becket Institute at Oxford University in 2010 where she researched legal philosophy applied to religious freedom. Angela obtained a J.D., cum laude from Harvard Law School and a DPhil in legal philosophy from Oxford University. She was litigating hostile corporate takeovers and political asylum cases with Clearly Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New York when Becket recruited her to join its team. Angela speaks English fluently and French, Mandarin Chinese, and Taiwanese to varying degrees of competency. She enjoys dictionaries and design. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Angela’s Path to Defending People of All Faiths
• 7:06 Exposing U.N. Resolutions That Cover for Anti-Blasphemy Laws
• 16:28 Visiting India During Violent Riots Against Christian Dalits
• 29:48 Hardwired Global’s Beginning
• 34:23 Tanzin v. Tanvir: FBI Coercion on Muslim Men to Spy on Their Communities
• 38:32 What is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act?
• 43:52 Holt v. Hobbs: Religious Freedoms within Prison Systems
• 51:04 Government Overreach and the Little Sisters of the Poor
• 1:02:05 “The Most Important Religious Freedom Case in the Last Century” That Went Under the Radar
• 1:08:21 NYC’s Gov. Cuomo Unfairly Targeting Religious Communities During the Pandemic
• 1:16:52 Religious Freedom is Not About Who God Is, It’s About Who We Are