Projects > Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism
Photos, L to R: ISAF Media, Mike Barwood
What is the most effective way to produce the best human rights outcomes? Can religious leaders be advocates for meaningful, positive change?
Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism, led by American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow and Columbia University’s Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations Jack Snyder, seeks to explore more pragmatic, bottom-up methods of combating human rights abuses. A key theme of this approach is the significance of community-based religious discourse and organization in determining the prospects for rights improvements.
Events
Workshops on Promoting Rights across Cultures
Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation, will present workshops on strategies for promoting human rights discourse across cultures, including conversation between secular rights advocates and non-western religious cultures. The first workshop on Saturday, Sept. 24, will examine the processes by which human rights norms change and diffuse across cultures. The second workshop on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, will focus on strategies for promoting rights through persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides.
The panelists, participants, and audience for these open workshops will include scholars and non-academic practitioners in the human rights field, as well as students.
Fall 2011 Workshop One: Causes of persuasion, diffusion, and change.
Saturday, September 24, 2011, 10:00 am - 4:00 pm
The first of two meetings planned for the project Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism will discuss the state of empirical knowledge about the processes by which human rights norms change and diffuse across cultures.
What do we know about the processes by which human rights norms change and diffuse across cultures? Does normative change happen mainly through exposure to new principled ideas, by astute strategies of persuasion, by rewards for good behavior and punishments for bad, or as a result of deep and broad social and economic changes that create a climate in which rights can thrive? Is there a reason to expect that the trend of normative change over time is likely to favor human rights thinking, or are contrary trends just as likely? What circumstances favor change toward and away from rights improvements? When do efforts to promote rights improvements elicit “push-back”? What determines who wins when different normative systems are locked in competition? Which social groups are typically in the coalition that favors rights improvements, and which groups typically oppose it? Who are the swing groups, and what determines which side succeeds in recruiting them? What factors affect whether religious groups support or oppose rights improvements? What is the role of local “early adopters”, including religious leaders, in promote norms change and translating global norms into local terminology and practices?
Panel One: Understanding norms change and diffusion
Chair and introduction: Jack Snyder (Columbia University) -- Listen here.
Panelists: Kathryn Sikkink (University of Minnesota) -- Listen here.
Emilie Hafner‐Burton (University of California at San Diego) -- Listen here.
Amitav Acharya (American University) -- Listen here.
Charli Carpenter (University of Massachusetts‐Amherst) -- Listen here.
Discussants: Kenneth Roth (Human Rights Watch) -- Listen here.
Samuel Moyn (Columbia University) -- Listen here.
Audience Q & A -- Listen here.
Panel Two: Norms change initiatives by regional, local, and religious actors
Panelists: James Ron (University of Minnesota) -- Listen here
Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) -- Listen here
Tsveta Petrova (Columbia University Harriman Institute) -- Listen here
Daniel Goldstein (Rutgers University) -- Listen here
Discussant: Leslie Vinjamuri (School of Oriental and African Studies) -- Listen here
Audience Q & A -- Listen here
Thursday, Nov. 10 and Friday, Nov. 11: Workshops on Religion and Human Rights Pragmatism: Strategies for promoting rights through dialogue across religions and cultures
Columbia’s Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion, supported by a grant from the Luce Foundation, presents workshops on religion and human rights pragmatism. The workshops on Thursday and Friday, Nov. 10 and Nov. 11, focused on strategies for promoting rights through persuasion and dialogue across cultural and religious divides.
Co-sponsored with The Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life (IRCPL)
Religious and secular targets of human rights persuasion
Introduction -- Jack Sndyer, Columbia University-- Listen here
Panelists: Stephen Hopgood, SOAS University of London, “Selling human rights retail: competing with nationalism, religion, and other forms of political ideology.” -- Listen here
Thomas Kellogg, Open Society Foundations, “Human Rights Persuasion between Secular Democrats and Secular Authoritarians: The Case of China.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Sarah Leah Whitson, Human Rights Watch -- Listen here
Fabienne Hara, International Crisis Group -- Listen here
Session One Q&A -- Listen here
Panel 2 Religious
and
Secular
Proponents
of
Rights
and
Justice
Panelists: Daniel Philpott, Notre Dame University, “Religious and Secular Approaches to Transitional Justice and Democratization.” -- Listen here
Leslie Vinjamuri, SOAS, “Religion, Justice, and the Contestation of Norms.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Azza Karam, UNFPA -- Listen here
Sally Merry, New York University-- Listen here
Session Two Q&A -- Listen here
Friday, Nov. 11
Day Two Introduction -- Jack Snyder, Columbia University -- Listen here
Local dialogues about human rights
Panelists: Ron Hassner, UC Berkeley, “How Religious Leaders Persuade Their Own Followers to Change.” -- Listen here
Dorothy Q. Thomas,
“Strategic
Challenges
to
Bringing
Human
Rights
Home
in
the
U.S.” -- Listen here
Anupama Rao, Barnard College, “Localizing Human Rights Discourse on Caste and Gendered
Violence in Contemporary India.” -- Listen here
Discussants: Amaney Jamal, Princeton -- Listen here
Courtney Bender, Columbia University -- Listen here
Session One Q&A -- Listen here
Religion, cultural specificity, and universalism in dialogues about human rights
Panelists: Sally Merry, New York University, "Vernacularization on the Ground." -- Listen here
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia, "The Missionary Work of Women's Rights as Human Rights." -- Listen here
Burton Visotzky, Jewish Theological Seminary, "What Works and What Doesn't in International Interreligious Dialogue." -- Listen here
Session Two Q&A -- Listen here
Strategies of Persuasion Across Religious Boundaries
Naz Modirzadeh, Harvard University, "Forcing Intracultural Debate on Human Rights: Reflections on ‘Taking Islamic Law Seriously’." -- Listen here
Elizabeth Hurd, Northwestern University, "Religious Freedom and the Politics of Persuasion." -- Listen here
Session Three Q&A -- Listen here