The Bush Library’s Freedom Collection

One piece of the Bush Institute and Bush Library in Dallas is the Freedom Collection. Here’s the description:

The Freedom Collection pursues the principles of human liberty by documenting the personal stories of men and women who have led or participated in freedom movements. Using video interviews, collected papers and other materials, the Freedom Collection strives to inspire and provide insight to the current generation of freedom advocates, and expands access to information and successful strategies for change. The Freedom Collection reinforces the moral and practical importance of supporting pro-democracy movements and remaining actively engaged in the world. It also preserves history as a tool for scholars, policy makers and students studying democratic movements.

The interviews include an extraordinary group of people, from Havel and Walesa to Chen Guangcheng, Alejandro Toledo, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Rebiya Kadeer, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and many less famous fighters for freedom. The web site is here.

There are also interviews with American officials and former officials, about U.S. policy. My own interviews are here and here, and cover both Bush policy and more general reflections on American support for human rights and on recent developments in the expansion --and sometimes contraction-- of democracy.