Can universal human rights exist in the profoundly diverse world?

ogólnouniwersyteckie

This course will take a multidisciplinary approach and analyze modern "international law" and "human rights" as these ideas developed over human history. We will explore current international and human rights regimes and look at them from historical, philosophical, anthropological, economic, ecological, and sociological perspectives. While the course will offer a solid grounding in understanding modern international architecture, it will equip you with an analysis of the underlying principles and ideas from the point of view of social and biological evolution, economics, and ecology, focusing on current controversies, debates, and contested theories.

This course may be for you if you have ever pondered similar questions. Questions like: What are human rights? Should there be the primacy of international law? Shall we support global legal principles? Who deserves human rights? Can we defend universal rights and standard rules in a culturally diverse world? Should groups prevail over individual's rights?

We will start by reviewing the history of the development of human societies, phases of development of human cultures, and the corresponding attitudes towards human beings, laws, and the idea of human rights and human duties. We will analyze why and how various social groups differ in their approaches to who deserves to be called "human" and their corresponding "rights." Secondly, we will look at biological and ecological determinants of the evolutionary process and how they can shape and elucidate various social, cultural, and religious approaches as to which groups deserve to be called "nation" or who qualifies as a "human being" and what should be their corresponding rights and why. The course will critically examine the cultural and political meanings of concepts about human rights, especially considering the universalist versus relativist debate in the context of human socio-cultural and biological evolution. We will examine various societies and how they construe rights and responsibilities and analyze concepts such as power distribution, discrimination, prejudice, genocide, coercive assimilation, and other historical patterns of domination and exploitation. We will look at common justifications for the exploitation, destruction, disenfranchisement, and underdevelopment of various historically disadvantaged groups such as women, children, indigenous people, and others.

The concept of universal human rights will be discussed from the historical and cultural perspective to move toward a more contextualized understanding of the modern system and the growing populist challenges against it.

Once we understand the history of human societies, we will focus on the modern international architecture of international law and human rights, their genesis, underlying realities and theories behind their creation, and the evolution of that system over the last fifty years. We will examine the legal, social, scientific, and jurisprudential issues surrounding the effort to establish a universally applicable human rights framework in a world with profound cultural and religious diversity. We will analyze the basis of the current system and review major philosophical approaches to human rights and international laws, e.g., positivism, natural law, deconstructivism, post-modernism, and structuralism). We will examine human rights applied to marginalized groups and individuals, how they developed, and why. We will also analyze the conflict between group rights and the rights of individuals and discuss whether modern human rights law is sufficient to protect the human rights of women and other marginalized groups living in Western and non-Western societies.

Finally, we will attempt to arrive at a synthesis and focus on current debates concerning the validity of modern international law and existing human rights treaties in a complex and diverse world, with emphasis on understanding various philosophical approaches such as universalism, cultural and legal relativism, positivism, liberalism, authoritarianism, and populism, among others.

An essential part of the course will be understanding the underlying epistemology of knowledge and science: How do we know what we know and what we do not know and cannot know? The course will combine regular lectures with a "Socratic teaching method" using "cases," which the students will read and debate in class. That approach will allow students to practice creating arguments for various positions and understand which positions are more defensible and what the common cognitive distortions and typical logical fallacies are.

Helpful resources: History, Anthropology, Social Science, Cultural Evolution, and Human Rights

The Story of Human Rights, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3BbLk5UIQ

John Stuart Mill Essay on Liberty

https://archive.org/details/onliberty00inmill/page/n11/mode/2up

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

https://thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-Rights-of-Man-by-Thomas-Paine.pdf

Donnelly Jack (1989). "Cultural Relativism and Universal Human Rights." Human Rights Quarterly, pp. 400- 419. Also, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt1xx5q2

An-Naim, Abdullahi (1994). "What Do We Mean by Universal?," Also,

https://www.academia.edu/51888477/Abdullahi_An_Naims_Philosophy_on_Islam_and_Human_Rights

https://en.unesco.org/courier/2019-1/abdullahi-ahmed-naim-human-rights-secular-state-and-sharia-today

Ellen Messer, Anthropology and Human Rights

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.an.22.100193.001253

E.O. Wilson - The Meaning of Human Existence

Elizabeth M. Zechenter, In the Name of Culture: Cultural Relativism and the Abuse of the Individual,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3630957

https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-interactive-timeline

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/essential-timeline-understanding-evolution-homo-sapiens-180976807/

Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics. See also

https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/introphil/chapter/bertrand-russell/

Sarah Blaffer Hardy, The Women that Never Evolved

Alfred Crosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society 1250-1600

Robert Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony

Carole Nagengast and Terence Turner, Introduction: Universal Human Rights versus Cultural Relativity,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3630954

Ellen Fisher, The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce.

Jonathan Losos, Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution

Sean Carroll, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe

Sean Carroll, Preposterous Universe podcast, https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies .

Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State.

Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman

Daniel C Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life

Max Tegmark, Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality

Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000m When Explorers Connected the World and Globalization Began

David Graeber and David Wengrow: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropology/Introduction

Introduction to Anthropology, https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cultural_Anthropology/Introduction

AAA Declaration on Human Rights, 1999 and 2020

https://americananthro.org/about/policies/declaration-on-anthropology-and-human-rights/

https://americananthro.org/news-advocacy/2020-statement-on-anthropology-and-human-rights/

AAA 1947 statement on Human Rights

https://humanrights.americananthro.org/1947-statement-on-human-rights/

Lemkin, Genocide, and the Modern World, 2-part webinar,

Part 1, https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx9qmpimw0knh35/Lemkin%20-%20part%201.mp4?dl=0

Part 2, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvCtfiDRl6Q

Introduction to Human Rights video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh3BbLk5UIQ

Selected Human Rights Documents

The Magna Carta http://hrweb.org/legal/magnacrt.html

United States Declaration of Independence: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html

U.S. Constitution: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html

French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen:

http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/declaration.html

May 3rd Polish Constitution

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_3_May_1791

Charter of the United Nations

http://hrweb.org/legal/unchartr.html

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR):

http://humanrightsmuseum.ca/exhibits/udhr/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RR4VXNX3jA

Eleanor Roosevelt and UDHR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKy7WcqQWtc

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR):

http://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20999/volume-999-I-14668-English.pdf

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR):

http://hrweb.org/legal/escr.html

UN Convention on the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces (also known as Geneva Convention)

https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions/overview-geneva-conventions.htm

Convention against Genocide

http://hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

Vienna Declaration and Program of Action:

http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(symbol)/a.conf.157.23.en

Convention Against Torture

https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-against-torture-and-other-cruel-inhuman-or-degrading

Doctrine of Discovery and Right of Conquest

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/doctrine-discovery-1493

https://www.wusf.org/2023-03-30/the-vatican-repudiates-doctrine-of-discovery-which-was-used-to-justify-colonialism

UN Declaration of Rights Indigenous Peoples

https://www.ohchr.org/en/indigenous-peoples/un-declaration-rights-indigenous-peoples

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

http://hrweb.org/legal/cdw.html

Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention)

https://www.coe.int/en/web/istanbul-convention

Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, Beijing +5 Political Declaration and Outcome

https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/01/beijing-declaration

Maputo Protocol

https://au.int/en/newsevents/20201117/maputo-protocol-womens-rights-africa

Rome Statute (ICC Statute)

https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf

Statute of the International Court of Justice Statute

https://www.icj-cij.org/statute

European Convention for Human Rights

https://www.echr.coe.int/documents/d/echr/Convention_ENG

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A12012P%2FTXT

Helpful websites

United Nations Office of Human Rights

https://www.ohchr.org/en/ohchr_homepage

United Nations Human Rights Council

https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/home

United Nations Audio Visual Library

https://legal.un.org/avl/lectureseries.html

Council of Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe

United Nations Office of Human Rights

https://www.ohchr.org/en/ohchr_homepage

UN Rights of Women

https://www.un.org/en/conferences/women/beijing1995

UN Women

https://www.unwomen.org/en

ICJ website

https://www.icj-cij.org/court

ICC website

https://www.icc-cpi.int/

ECHR website

https://www.echr.coe.int/

To develop an up-to-date, critical, and informed understanding of the current concept of who is human and what human rights are; to familiarize students with the modern international human rights regime; to be able to place human rights issues within the context of the evolution of human societies and understand why it matters; and to understand the current backlash against these concepts and what can or should be done about it.

Students will master basic concepts and arguments in international human rights and ethics, analyze related issues in a broader socio-cultural context, and understand relevant legal and ethical issues. In addition, students will gain experience writing and speaking clearly about human rights issues and improve their understanding of ongoing debates.

Course Requirements

1. Completion of all Reading Assignments

2. Class Attendance and Active Participation: Attendance and participation are vital to the success of the course, and participation is expected for all classes. Class discussions will be conducted openly; all perspectives will be listened to and debated civilly. Students might be asked to facilitate specific agreed-upon class discussions based on the readings.

3. Human Rights Issues Journal: Students must keep a blog/journal throughout the class and write about various human rights issues as they encounter them. The journal's format is up to the student—entrees can vary in length and format; at the minimum, by the end of the semester, students should have 25 cases (approx. one page per case describing the situation observed and student’s reflections on the issue).

4. As agreed upon with each student, There will be two to three minor projects during the semester.

Grading

1. Attendance and Class Participation: Students are expected to attend each class and actively participate. Class attendance is mandatory. Missing classes lower participation grade. Active class participation is required. Max 2 absences with acceptable excuse.

2. Human Rights Journal/Blog/Reflections Journal

3. Two-three minor projects during the semester, as agreed with each student.

4. Extra Incentive for Publishable Quality Writing: if you get your class related work published, you will receive the highest grade. You must discuss and agree with me what type of publishing is acceptable, what are the legitimate proposed publications, and what is the minimal content to be published. Once agreed and your work gets published (or is accepted for publication), you will receive an automatic grade upgrade (restrictions apply).

5. Policy on Plagiarism: Student should do their own writing, act ethically, use proper citations, and give credit when due. Students MUST follow all applicable policies on plagiarism and ethical conduct.

6. Policy on late work: late work can be accepted only if the student has a legitimate reason for a paper/journal being late. Students must show proper documents. Students should contact me before turning in any late assignment.

No formal exam. Instead: Active class participation, completion of 2-3 class assignment plus a completion of a Human Rights Journal