IHR Faculty Seminar Series: Crucial Contexts - Human Rights

An RSVP is required for this event.  Please contact the IHR at ihr@asu.edu, 480-965-3000, or carol.withers@asu.edu.

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Margaret Walker: “A Philosopher Looks at The Trouble with Truth Commissions”

Truth commissions have achieved great prominence in the past twenty years, yet recent empirically oriented critiques suggest that truth commissions do not or cannot do what they claim. As a moral philosopher, Prof. Walker argues that truth commissions may not achieve a complete, unassailable, impartial truth, but they are justified nevertheless because they seek a very specific truth that is needed in order to reconcile the moral framework of human rights with a set of politically urgent circumstances. Philosophers have been largely absent in these discussions because of some disciplinary blocks that stand in the way of their contributions. As she discusses those blocks, Prof. Walker will invite others to share ideas about both obstacles and possibilities in networking, funding, and publishing on human rights from a humanities perspective.

Stephen Batalden: "History and Hijab: A Case of Human Rights in Southeastern Europe”

In discussing couple of highly charged cases involving the wearing of hijab in southeastern Europe, Professor Batalden will draw upon historical and regional area-study approaches to the humanities as he demonstrates their importance to the study of human rights. The knowledge and documentation surrounding the cases came to light as part of a State Department Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau grant on “faith communities and civil society in southeastern Europe,” in which Batalden is an expert. 

Margaret Walker is professor of philosophy and Lincoln Professor of Ethics, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies. Stephen Batalden is professor of history, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, and director of the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies.