11.164
Human Rights at Home and Abroad
Provides a rigorous and critical introduction to the history, foundation, structure, and operation of the human rights movement. Focuses on key ideas, actors, methods and sources, and critically evaluates the field. Addresses current debates in human rights, including the relationship with security, democracy, development and globalization, urbanization, equality (in housing and other economic and social rights; women's rights; ethnic, religious and racial discrimination; and policing/conflict), post-conflict rebuilding and transitional justice, and technology in human rights activism. No prior coursework needed, but work experience, or community service that demonstrates familiarity with global affairs or engagement with ethics and social justice issues, preferred. Students taking graduate version are expected to write a research paper.
Fall 2015 · Human Rights: At Home and Abroad
Topics
- What are human rights? History, philosophy and character of the rights discourse
- Key conceptual debates: Universality v. cultural relativism, public v. private, relativity of rights, liberal origins, individual v. community rights, civil v. human rights
- Sovereignty and self-determination?: The impact of North-South divisions, the West v. Rest
- Human rights at home: The struggle to enforce human rights in the U.S.
- Security v. human rights: Torture, assassinations and the War on Terror
- Economic development, globalization and poverty
- Gender, equality, and sexual minorities
- Ethnic, religious and racial violence and group rights
- Forcible Intervention versus sovereignty
Readings
- [DH] = Hurwitz, Deena, Margaret Satherthwaite, and Douglas Ford. Human Rights Advocacy Stories . Foundation Press, 2008. ISBN: 9781599411996.
- Janis, Mark. International Law . 6th ed. Aspen Publishers, 2012. ISBN: 9781454813682.
- [JD] Chapters 1, 2, and 4.
- Goodale, Mark. “Introduction.” In The Practice of Human Rights . Edited by Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry. Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 1–38. ISBN: 9780521683784.
- Pogge, Thomas. “How Should Human Rights be Conceived?” In The Philosophy of Human Rights. Edited by Patrick Hayden. Paragon House, 2001, pp. 187–210. ISBN: 9781557787903.
- [JD] Chapters 6 and 7.
- [BR] Chapter 7.
- [JD] Chapter 5.
- [BR] Chapters 3–6.
- Moyn, Samuel. Chapter 3 in The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History . Belknap Press, 2012. ISBN: 9780674064348.
- Cynthia Soohoo, Catherine Albisa, and Martha F. Davis, eds. Chapters 1, 5, and 7 in Bringing Human Rights Home: A History of Human Rights in the United States . University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780812220797.
- Anderson, Carol. Chapter 5 in Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 . Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780521531580.
- Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblidness . The New Press, 2012. ISBN: 9781595586438.
- Ignatieff, Michael, ed. American Exceptionalism and Human Rights . Princeton University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780691116488.
- Rejali, Darius. Chapters 21, 22 and 23 in Torture and Democracy . Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780691114224.
- Luban, David. Chapters 1 and 2 in Torture, Power, and Law . Cambridge University Press, 2014. ISBN: 9781107656291.
- [DH] Satterthwaite, Margaret. “The Story of El Masri v. Tenet : Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the “War on Terror”.”
- [BR] Chapter 2.
- [JD] Chapter 13.
- [DH] Narula, Smita. “The Story of Narmada Bachao Andolan : Human Rights in the Global Economy and the Struggle against the World Bank.”
- Human Rights and Extreme Poverty, Report of the Independent Expert to the UN Council on Human Rights, E/CN.4/2005/49, 11 February 2005.
- Rahnema, Majid. “Poverty.” In The Development Dictionary . Edited by Wolfgang Sachs. St. Martin’s Press, 1992, pp. 158–76. ISBN: 9781856490436.
- Sen, Amartya. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 in Development as Freedom . Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 13–53 and 87–110. ISBN: 9780198297581.
- [JD] Chapter 16.
- Brown, Wendy. “Suffering the Paradoxes of Rights.” In Left Legalism/Left Critique . Edited by Wendy Brown and Janey Halley. Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 420–34. ISBN: 9780822329688.
- [DH] Bromley, Mark, and Kristen Walker. “The Stories of Dudgeon and Toonen : Personal Struggles to Legalize Sexual Identities.”
- Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S.________(2015)
- [JD] Chapter 3.
- [DH] Anaya, S. James, and Maia S. Campbell. “Gaining Legal Recognition of Indigenous Land Rights: The Story of the Awas Tingni Case in Nicaragua.”
- Kymlicka, Will. Chapter 2 in Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity . Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780199280407.
- [JD] Chapter 15.
- Cushman, Thomas. “The Liberal Case for the War in Iraq.” In Human Rights in the ‘War on Terror’ . Edited by Richard A. Wilson. Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 78–107. ISBN: 9780521618335.
- Rieff, David. Part II, “The Lives they Lives.” to “The Way we Live Now.” In At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention. Simon & Schuster, 2013. ISBN: 9780743287074.
- Hurwitz, Deena, Margaret Satherthwaite, and Douglas Ford. Human Rights Advocacy Stories . Foundation Press, 2008. ISBN: 9781599411996.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 17.391[J] Subject meets with 11.497 Prereq: Permission of instructor Acad Year 2027-2028: Not offered Acad Year 2028-2029: U (Fall) 2-0-10 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2015
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.