Copyright by Gregory Krauss 2007 - The University of Texas at Austin

ability to update the State Department about the concerns of activists and their plans
for advocacy. Lister, however, was not opposed to human rights advocacy. In fact,
Lister’s memorandums on human rights events, which went directly to the Assistant
Secretary of State in charge of the human rights bureau, performed some degree of
advocacy for activist positions without so much as a request from the activists. Yet,
Lister also wanted activists to directly lobby the State Department and the Congress.
Often, they were fighting for the very same human rights concerns that he—and the
human rights bureau—were advocating within the State Department. “Human rights
advocates, both in and out of government, can help each other,” he noted in a speech
at Florida International University in 1988. 136
NGOs had testified at the Fraser hearings and generally could expect a more
sympathetic hearing in Congress than from the administration. It was not always a
given that human rights activists would think to communicate with the U.S. State
Department. This was particularly true during the Reagan administration, which many
activists believed cared little about human rights. Lister sometimes encountered the
attitude that Reagan had completely eliminated human rights as a foreign policy
factor. On April 25, 1983, Lister attended a luncheon at the Women’s National
Democratic Club where Patricia Derian gave a speech critical of Reagan’s foreign
policy. The women at Lister’s table were surprised to learn that Lister was with the
human rights bureau; they assumed that the bureau had been abolished. 137 Lister
politely informed them that the human rights bureau was, indeed, still functioning. 138
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