April 16, 2009
Global Justice in the 21st Century is topic of conference
The Program on Values in Society and the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities are sponsoring a conference on Global Justice in the 21st Century April 17-18.
Health care, environmental degradation, political violence, human rights, and world poverty are among the global issues requiring global solutions that will be discussed at the conference. It will bring together scholars at the forefront of research on these issues to consider such questions as:
- What kind of international legal order should we work for in the 21st century?
- How should human rights be understood in the 21st century?
- How should intellectual property rights be balanced against the need for life-saving drugs?
- What rights should poorer countries have against wealthier ones?
- How should the international community address global warming?
- What rights should the world’s poor have to be protected from the effects of global warming?
- How should medical research be done to protect the world’s poor from exploitation?
Keynote speaker for the conference is Thomas Pogge, Leitner professor of philosophy and international affairs, with a joint appointment as professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He will speak on The Health Impact Fund: Boosting Innovation Without Obstructing Free Access at 7 p.m. Friday, April 17 in 210 Kane.
Friday Sessions
- 8:45 a.m.: Nicole Hassoun, Carnegie Mellon University, Libertarian Welfare Rights?
- 10:30 a.m.: Dan Wikler, Harvard University, Single vs. Multiple Standards in Health Care and Research: An Issue of Global Justice.
- 1:30 p.m.: Allen Buchanan, Duke University, Innovation and Inequality.
- 3:15 p.m.: Angelina Godoy, UW, Intellectual Property, Medicines, and the Right to Health: A View from Central America.
Saturday Sessions
- 8:45 a.m.: Brad R. Roth, Wayne State University, Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement: Premises of a Pluralist International Legal Order.
- 10:30 a.m.: Joel Ngugi, UW, The Corrosive Effects of Neoliberal Legal Thought on Global Human Rights Discourse.
- 1:30 p.m.: Mathias Risse, Harvard University, Who Should Shoulder the Burden? Global Climate Change and Common Ownershipof the Earth.
- 3:15 p.m.: Stephen Gardiner, UW, Geoengineering the Climate in a Perfect Moral Storm
More information is available on the conference Web site, or contact Professor Bill Talbott, 206-543-5095, wtalbott@u.washington.edu; or Professor Michael Blake, 206 221-7859, miblake@u.washington.edu. The conference is free and open to the public.
