Imagining a World Without the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The classic rights documents are iconic statements of claims by which a community articulates its fundamental values. These documents – such as Magna Carta, the US Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) – represent major junctures in the history of human rights. They seem to consolidate ideas and shape subsequent thinking. Or so some think. Some historians and legal scholars have been much more skeptical of these claims. This talk explores a varied set of historical data in order to understand the allegedly disruptive power of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Cosponsored with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Center for Civil and Human Rights.
Zachary Elkins
Zachary Elkins is associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on Latin American cases...
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