Director's Update: Universal Human Rights?

Human rights -- who could be against them? But the closer we look, the more contested they appear. Conflicts over health care, religious freedom, same-sex marriage, abortion, and torture are increasingly cast in human rights terms. The politics of human rights used to be about us v. them, about democracy v. dictatorship. Today more than ever it is also about us.

This month the Berkley Center is hosting two leading thinkers whose work illuminates the origins and challenges of the contemporary human rights landscape.

On October 21, Abdullahi A. An-Na'im, a visiting professor and senior fellow in the Center, will introduce seminar on "Human Rights and the Defamation of Religions" at the Georgetown Law Center. An-Na'im is a leading scholar of Islam and human rights and the author, most recently, of Islam and the Secular State (2007). You can find more event information here.

On October 27, 28, and 29, Hans Joas of the University of Chicago will give the third annual Berkley Center lectures on the topic "Universal Human Rights: A New Genealogy." A leading social theorist, Joas will offer an original perspective on the hotly debated question of the origin of human rights and their validity across religious and secular divides. You can RSVP here.