Seminar On Human Rights

In An Age Of Terrorism

STORRS — Civil liberties vs security. Human rights vs the War On Terror.

Long before these issues began to dominate the international headlines, the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut had the prescience to kick start its own exploration into what has become one of the most dire issues of the new millennium.

The result is the inaugural “Human Rights In An Age of Terrorism” conference, the brainchild of institute director, social anthropologist, and longtime author-activist Richard Ashby Wilson.

“We started organizing this conference last year, long before Abu Ghraib, because it struck us early on that the war on terror was being conducted without regard for human rights,” said Wilson.

The conference, scheduled for September 9–11, on UConn’s Storrs campus, brings together leading figures in the field of human rights. For three days, these leaders will examine the impact of the war on terror on human rights worldwide and seek ways to reconcile civil liberties with the need for security. All sessions are open to the University community and the general public.

US Senator Christopher Dodd will deliver the introduction.

Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, is the conference’s keynote speaker and will deliver the Sackler Human Rights Lecture. Mr Ignatieff’s most recent books include The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics In An Age Of Terror (2004) and Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (2003).

“There was a general drift toward an abusive environment. You could see it in the Patriot Act, which allowed such rights violations as having your phone tapped without a warrant. You could see it in the actions of the presidency. You could see it in the designation of prisoners as ‘enemy combatants’ who had no resource to a lawyer or judicial review,” Mr Wilson said.

Speakers include: Richard Goldstone, retired justice of the South African Constitutional Court and former chair of the international Task Force On Terrorism; Angelia Means, former law clerk for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; Julie Mertus, consultant with the Humanitarianism & War Project at the Watson Institute for International Affairs.

Also, Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute and former executive director of Human Rights Watch; Geoffrey Robertson, a judge for the Special Court For Sierra Leone and counsel in many landmark human rights cases; Mary Robinson, United Nations high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland; and Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union.

They will discuss and debate topics that include “Do We Have To Choose Between Human Rights and Security?”; “Connecting Human Development and Human Security”; “Terrorism and Human Rights”; “Privacy, Technology and Civil Liberties”; “Fallacies About Liberty and Security”; “Can Terrorists Get A Fair Trial”; “The Shaken Kaleidoscope of Human Rights Since 9/11”; and “Public International Law and Terrorism.”

Registration information, general public fees and further details for the Human Rights In An Age of Terrorism conference can be found at www.humanrights.uconn.edu or by calling 860-427-7888.