UW News

April 6, 2006

Moral standards for human rights, human wrongs subject of symposium

The moral standards one might use to critique actions by ourselves, or others, when charges of human rights violations are raised will be considered by leading scholars on human rights from Oxford University, University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington on Monday, April 10.

“Human Wrongs and Human Rights: A Public Symposium,” from 7 to 9 p.m., at UW’s William H. Gates Hall, Room 138, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow. See http://depts.washington.edu/philweb/Talbott%20Symposium.html.

Speakers will be William Talbott, UW professor of philosophy and author of “Which Rights Should be Universal?” published last year; Henry Shue, Oxford University professor and co-principal investigator of a five-year project on the changing character of war including assessing the Bush doctrine of preemptive/preventive war; and Kok-chor Tan, University of Pennsylvania assistant professor specializing in political philosophy involving global justice, nationalism and human rights.

The symposium comes at a time when wars, epidemics, revelations of torture and controversies over freedom of speech and religion regularly make the front pages of American newspapers, says Andrew Light, associated professor of philosophy who can be contacted for more information about the symposium at alight@u.washington.edu.

Along with the philosophy department, the symposium is sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the law school, Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Evans School of Public Affairs and the political science department.