(C) Freedom House
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“Not the Work of Months or Years, but of Generations”: Michael Abramowitz Bids Freedom House Farewell [1]

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Date: 2024-05

Tomorrow will be my last day as president of Freedom House. It will be a bittersweet moment.

I am sad to leave this remarkable organization and my dedicated colleagues. But as a career journalist, I am also humbled to be taking on the mantle of director of Voice of America (VOA). Like Freedom House, VOA was founded during World War II as a vital tool in the fight against fascism. In February 1942, one of VOA’s first broadcasts into Germany began with a pledge: “Here in America, we get news from all over the world. The news may be good or bad for us—we will always tell you the truth.”

I depart full of gratitude, not just for my own experience these past seven-and-a-half years—traveling the world to learn from, advocate for, and support democracy’s defenders is an undeniably great job—but also for the knowledge that even as threats to freedom continue to rise around the world, so does the courage of these defenders. Their bravery inspires me and gives me hope for the future.

When I started as the president of this organization, Freedom in the World had just documented the 11th consecutive year of decline in political rights and civil liberties. This past year brought the 18th year of decline, marking the spread of a democratic recession that has touched every continent and even the United States itself, long a beacon for democracy-loving peoples everywhere. Dictators are digging in, spreading propaganda, jailing their opponents, and targeting the critics living beyond their borders.

In this grim landscape, it is too easy to be cynical and defeatist, and to do so would be a mistake. The late senator John McCain memorably wrote that “It is a moral failure to believe tyranny and injustice are the inevitable tragedies of man’s fallen nature, that there are some places in the world that will not change or aren’t worth the effort to make better. They can be changed. They have been.”

My most enduring memories of Freedom House will almost certainly be of the human rights defenders and democracy advocates whom I have met, people who have never subscribed to the cynicism McCain fought against his entire life. You can find them working in every corner of the globe, insisting on their rights even in the most repressive places. Their optimism commands our deep respect—and support.

I think often of journalist and activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who came to Freedom House events in 2017 after he was poisoned by the Kremin in retaliation for his outspoken critiques of the Putin regime. In 2022, shortly before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he returned to Russia to carry on his protest of the regime’s abuses. He is now serving a 25-year prison sentence on trumped up charges. This week, Kara-Murza was awarded journalism’s highest honor, the Pulitzer Prize, for his commentary from his prison cell.

Of Kara-Murza’s great qualities, one of his greatest is his recognition that a terrible status quo cannot stand. In one of his prize-winning pieces, Kara-Murza noted that “absolutely no one in the summer of 1991 expected that by the end of the year, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be banned and the Soviet Union dissolved. The next time, change will come in exactly the same way—abruptly and unexpectedly. None of us knows the specific moment and specific circumstances, but it will happen in the foreseeable future. . . . It’s only a matter of time.”

I appreciated greatly the respect Kara-Murza and other advocates have for the work of Freedom House. It is one of the things that fills me with the most pride about this organization.

In 2020, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya emerged as a great democratic opposition leader when she ran for the presidency of Belarus in place of her political-prisoner husband, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, and won the popular vote in a landslide, only to be exiled by the country’s dictator, Alyaksandr Lukashenka. When I met her later during a visit to Lithuania, she gave me a hug and expressed gratitude for our work. I was moved beyond words.

Another vivid memory is attending a conference in Prague, where a young man from the Republic of Congo told me, “When I advocate for freedom, I use the Freedom House scores. You are helping me to make the case for freedom and democracy in my own country.” His testimony underscored a principle that has long grounded the Freedom House theory of change. Freedom House is not the hero of the story, but through research, political advocacy, and direct assistance we provide desperately needed support to the heroic individuals and movements fighting for every scrap of progress in their own communities and societies.

Their stories, and their profound appreciation for the work of Freedom House, continually throw into sharp relief how vital this work remains, 70 years after the demise of Nazi Germany and the threat that originally brought together Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and dozens of politically and culturally diverse leaders from across American society.

Today is a perilous moment for the cause of freedom. But I remain profoundly optimistic that the incredible activists, defenders, and others Freedom House supports and works with around the world will ultimately prevail.

This is not the work of months or years, but of generations. As long as threats to freedom persist, this organization will persist in defending it. And I will be cheering Freedom House on.

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[1] Url: https://freedomhouse.org/article/not-work-months-or-years-generations-michael-abramowitz-bids-freedom-house-farewell

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