17.391
Human Rights at Home and Abroad
See description under subject 11.164[J] .
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 11.164[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.