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human
rights degree
Bard's introduction
of a B.A. in human rights in the spring of 2003, as well as
Bard's award of a Henry R. Luce Professorship in Human Rights
and Journalism, has allowed for the formal offering of an
interdisciplinary undergraduate human rights degree. The Human
Rights Program at Bard features student internship opportunities
and opportunities for independent student research in the
field of human rights.
core
faculty
Thomas Keenan (director),
Amy
Ansell, Ian Buruma, Mark Danner, Laura Kunreuther, Susan Merriam, Gregory Moynahan, Geoffrey Nyarota, John Ryle, Jesse
Shipley.
program
description
The Human Rights
Program is a trans-disciplinary program involving such diverse
fields as literature, political studies, history, anthropology,
economics, film and media, and art history. It emphasizes
integrative historical and conceptual investigations, and
offers a rigorous background which can inform meaningful practical
engagements. The program seeks to orient students in the intellectual
tradition of human rights and to give them the resources with
which to appreciate and criticize its contemporary status.
The
program encourages students to treat Human Rights as an intellectual
question, and through their explorations of it to understand
what is at stake in what they think and do. Being serious
about human rights means challenging the new human rights
orthodoxy, thinking critically about human rights as a profession
rather than merely training for it, and resisting a post-Cold
War triumphalism. It also means refusing to accept the claim
that human rights are only matters of law and diplomacy, or
a simple fig leaf for Western imperialism. Instead, the program
engages openly with the history and the actuality of the idea,
teaching students to explore its trajectory with attention
to the arguments over its meanings, the passions it arouses,
and the extent of its influences and effects.
Claude Lefort wrote,
two decades ago, that the great French and American declarations
of the rights of man at the end of the eighteenth-century
had, "by referring the source of right to the human utterance
of right, made an enigma both of humanity and of right."
Human Rights at Bard takes its point of departure from that
enigma, rather than trying to avoid it.
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