The Long View: Human Rights Activism, Past and Present

Although interdisciplinary studies of human rights have become more widespread recently, the field is still dominated by law, and introduction classes to human rights would usually focus on legal texts and concepts. Your typical first class in Human Rights 101 would include recitations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, with many of the fresh students gradually falling asleep. A common alternative is to start with philosophical texts: Paine and Burke, Mill and Bentham, a bit of Dworkin; more interesting to some, but still a bit too abstract for those students who joined the course after spending the summer campaigning against Guantanamo or for the rights of immigrants. Preparing to teach such a first class in human rights last year, I decided to delay the legal and philosophical discussions for a later stage and began by recounting three stories of human rights activism.