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Outstanding Young Alumni Award
Alumni News
36
Gabriel Kuris ’99 Mapping the Causes of Corruption
A world map can do a lot more than decorate a wall. The one that hung in the bedroom of the young Gabriel Kuris inspired dreams of faraway places and a genuine interest in the people who live there. Today, he has travelled to more than 70 countries and feels as comfortable working with academics, lawyers and politicians in a high-rise New York office tower as he does interviewing barefoot monks and armed warlords about their civil war sitting on the dirt floor of a missionary camp in the Solomon Islands. His work with truth commissions and anti-corruption agencies seeks to document abuses in order to improve human rights and create responsive government institutions. “I think corruption is really the crucial challenge of this century,” Mr. Kuris says. “It’s the reason why there are a lot of democracies around the world that are not functioning very well and why poverty is perpetuated.” Mr. Kuris was recently appointed Deputy Director of Columbia Law School’s new Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity that researches corruption in local government. He previously worked at Innovations for Successful Societies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. He has a degree from Harvard Law School and has investigated human rights abuses and corruption in more than a dozen countries including Nigeria, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore. After an unfulfilling year as a corporate lawyer, Mr. Kuris received a Fulbright creative writing fellowship in 2008 to chronicle the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide and how it affected efforts to maintain peace, justice, and development in Cambodia. He found people were less interested in discussing past atrocities than they were in eradicating the corruption that affected their daily lives.
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Next, he spent a year working on court reforms in the Philippines and began to investigate the possibility of working for a truth commission. He found an online reference to one operating in the Solomon Islands and a brief mention of their civil war. Eager to learn more, but with no prospect of a job, he flew to the Solomon Islands on his own. “I thought I would just start talking to people and see what happened,” he smiles, showing characteristic confidence and initiative. He conducted more than 50 interviews with gun-toting militia leaders, local farmers, foreign arms traders, as well as Australians and Pacific Islanders helping to oversee the country’s recovery and monks who played a major role as peacemakers. “The monks were some of the most heroic people I’ve ever met,” he says. “At tremendous risk to their lives, they walked into firefights and talked combatants into putting down their weapons and choosing peace. I found that people are very happy to tell the story from their side and they feel justified in what they’re doing. Even things that may look wrong at first glance have reasons behind them.” It is easy to see why people are comfortable entrusting Mr. Kuris with their personal narratives. His interest is obvious and sincere, his manner is polite and non-judgmental, and his humor puts them at ease. “I ended up having this amazing experience,” he says. He also ended up writing a report on rebuilding the justice system and training local staffers for the Solomon Islands Truth and Reconciliation Commission.