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WELLESLEY,
Mass. -- “Human Rights Culture,” a conference
and workshop, will be held Friday, April 30, from 9 am-5
pm in Wellesley College's Clapp Library Lecture Room. It
is free and open to the public. Organized by Thomas Cushman,
professor of sociology, the conference will consider the
emergence of human rights culture. Rather than focusing
on the problems and prospects of promoting rights, the
conference goal is an examination of human rights as a
cultural system of practices, ideologies, interests, values
and forms of power.
Among
the issues to be addressed, said Cushman, are the kinds
of cultural and ideological divisions that exist
within human rights culture. “What are the political
practices used within the human rights culture and how
do these intersect, compliment and conflict with other
national and international practices?” he asks. “What
is the effect of bureaucracy, money, power and the media
on humanitarianism? How has the human rights community
confronted Bosnia, Kosovo, the war in Afghanistan, 9/11,
and the war in Iraq?”
A group of distinguished scholars will present the conference
including Cushman, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, global studies,
Wilfrid Laurier University; Micheline Ishay, international
studies, University of Denver; Thomas Keenan, Bard College
professor and director of the Human Rights Project; David
Stoll, anthropology, Middlebury College; John Torpey, sociology
and European studies, University of British Columbia; and
Richard Wilson, human rights, University of Connecticut
and director of the Human Rights Institute. For more information,
call 781-283-2142.
Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing
an excellent liberal-arts education for women who will
make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near
Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all
50 states and 68 countries. For more information, go to
www.wellesley.edu.
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