Keynote address by Michael Grant Ignatieff, professor of law and political science at the University of Toronto, Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada with a response from Jean Bethke Elshtain. Conference registration fee of $20 ($10 for students with valid ID and senior citizens) includes all meals and sessions on Friday, March 22. Keynote address is free and open to the public.

With a distinguished international group of speakers, this gathering will underscore the contributions made by humanistic scholarship to our understanding of human rights and, in particular, the role of governments in addressing and assuring human rights for their own citizens and for people around the world.

The conference will open on Thursday evening, March 21, with a keynote address from Michael Grant Ignatieff, professor of law and political science at the University of Toronto, Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada with a response from NHC trustee emerita Jean Bethke Elshtain the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Chair in the Foundations of American Freedom at Georgetown University.

Other speakers scheduled for this year's event include:

- Daniel A. Bell, professor of political philosophy at Tsinghua University, Beijing
- Anat Biletzki, professor of philosophy at Quinnipiac University and Tel Aviv University
- Christopher Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
- Catherine Gallagher, Eggers Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley
- Hans Joas, Permanent Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) at the University of Freiburg and Professor of Sociology and a Member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago
- Benedict F. Kiernan, Whitney Griswold Professor of History, professor of international and area studies and director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University
- Thomas Laqueur, Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley
- Robert Post, dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law at Yale Law School
- Wang Hui, professor of Chinese literature at Tsinghua University, Beijing
- Richard A. Wilson, Gladstein Chair of Human Rights, professor of anthropology and law and director of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut
- David Wong, Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University

Michael Grant Ignatieff, keynote speakerMichael Grant Ignatieff

For a tentative schedule of conference events please follow this link (PDF).

*To register for the full conference, including the Thurs., March 21 opening event, please follow this link. Please note: conference registration fee of $20 ($10 for students with valid ID and senior citizens) includes all meals and sessions on Friday, March 22.

*To reserve space for the Thurs., March 21 opening keynote address ONLY, please follow this link. This event is free and open to the public.

Human Rights and the Humanities is made possible through the generous support of the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina, Duke University, NC State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.