Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.
Bard College is a private liberal arts college in the hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson, in the town of Red Hook, in New York State. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark.
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a US-based grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the stated aim of advancing justice, education, public health and independent media. The group's name was inspired by Karl Popper's 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Tides Foundation is a left-leaning donor advised fund based in the United States. It was founded in San Francisco in 1976 by Drummond Pike. Tides distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, which are often politically progressive. An affiliated group, Tides Advocacy, is a "massive progressive incubator." Tides has received substantial funding from George Soros.
Central European University is a private research university with campuses in Vienna, Budapest, and New York. The university offers intensive graduate and undergraduate programs in the social sciences and humanities, and is known for its low student-faculty ratio, and a highly diverse international student body. Admissions are classified as highly selective with an acceptance rate of 13%. All CEU programs and courses are accredited in Austria, Hungary and the United States.
Judicial Watch (JW) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit American conservative activist group that files Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits to investigate claimed misconduct by government officials. Founded in 1994, Judicial Watch has primarily targeted Democrats, in particular the administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as Hillary Clinton's role in them. It was founded by attorney Larry Klayman, and has been led by Tom Fitton since 2003.
Susan Weber is an American historian. She is the founder and director of the Bard Graduate Center (BGC) for studies in the decorative arts, design history, and material culture affiliated with Bard College in Dutchess County, New York. She was previously married to George Soros.
George Soros is a Hungarian-American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. As of October 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the "most generous giver". He is a resident of New York.
Alexander Davidovich Goldfarb is a Russian-American microbiologist, activist, and author. He emigrated from the USSR in 1975 and studied in Israel and Germany before settling permanently in New York in 1982. Goldfarb is a naturalized American citizen. He has combined a scientific career as a microbiologist with political and public activities focused on civil liberties and human rights in Russia, in the course of which he has been associated with Andrei Sakharov, George Soros, Boris Berezovsky, and Alexander Litvinenko. He has not visited Russia since 2000.
Huma Mahmood Abedin is an American political staffer who was vice chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign for President of the United States. Before that, Abedin was deputy chief of staff to Clinton when she was U.S. Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. She was also the traveling chief of staff and former assistant to Clinton during her 2008 presidential campaign for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential election.
Patrick Hubert Gaspard is an American former diplomat who serves as president of Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank.
Xyza Cruz Bacani is a Filipina street photographer and documentary photographer. She is known for her black-and-white photographs of Hong Kong and documentary projects about migration and the intersections of labor and human rights. She is one of the Magnum Foundation's Human Rights Fellows and is the recipient of a resolution passed by the Philippines House of Representatives in her honor, HR No. 1969. Xyza is one of the BBC’s 100 Women of the World 2015, 30 Under 30 Women Photographers 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2016, and a Fujifilm Ambassador. She is the recipient of grants from Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting 2016, WMA Commission 2017, and part of Open Society Foundations Moving Walls 24.
The Russian undesirable organizations law is a law that was signed by President Vladimir Putin on 23 May 2015 as a follow-up to the 2012 Russian foreign agent law and Dima Yakovlev Law. The law gives prosecutors the power to extrajudicially declare foreign and international organizations "undesirable" in Russia and shut them down. Organizations are subject to heavy fines and lengthy prison sentences if they fail to dissolve when given notice to do so. These punishments also apply to Russians who maintain ties to them. Critics say that the law is unclear in many areas and can be used to silence dissent. Supporters of the bill claim that this law is vital for the preservation of national security.
Weiner is a 2016 American fly-on-the-wall political documentary film by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg about Anthony Weiner's campaign for Mayor of New York City during the 2013 mayoral election.
The Open Society Foundation for South Africa is a South African non-profit grant-making organisation that supports the civil society sector. Its mission is to "promote the values, institutions and practices of an open, non-racial and non-sexist, democratic civil society."
Antônia Melo da Silva is a Brazilian human rights activist and environmentalist. In 2017, she received the Alexander Soros Foundation Award for Environmental and Human Rights Activism for leading campaigns against the construction of the Belo Monte Dam and other environmentally harmful projects in the Amazon rainforest.
Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire is a non-fiction book by Michael T. Kaufman released by Random House in 2002, that illuminates the early life, education, work, and controversial philanthropy of George Soros, a man considered by many to be one of the most enigmatic yet globally influential financiers of his era.
Open Society Foundations–Armenia (OSFA) is the Armenian branch of Open Society Foundations (OSF). Open Society Foundations–Armenia was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Yerevan. The foundation seeks to support local partners working to promote and protect human rights, the rule of law, justice, accountability, and transparency in Armenia.
