Resurrecting Human Rights in the Shadow of War

War and human rights are inextricably linked – by history, interpretation, and application and by fear, hope, and identity.

The absence of conflict often gives rise to complacency that devalues human rights or turns them into individualized personal political demands and cultural manifestos. Navigating this chasm is essential not only to conflict resolution and reconciliation, but also to defanging the vitriol permeating both governmental and personal conversations. How to do that is one of the pressing challenges of our time. This lecture is being held in conjunction with the BIHR and RAI.

Professor Allida Black, Ph.D., is Historian and Advisor to Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs, and an Affiliated Scholar to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. She also serves as director of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Foundation, the Marjorie Kovler Center for the Survivors of Torture, and other human rights organizations. She is editor emeritus of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, a documentary history of her efforts to construct and apply the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.