Webinar | Human Rights, Ethics, and the Importance of Evidence-Based Research
Thursday, March 21, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Zoom Webinar
What is the role of science in work on ethics and human rights? This webinar outlines the intimate relationship between human rights and ethics, and discusses how empirical, evidence-based research plays a critical role in revealing important, often counter-intuitive, findings about human rights.
Prof. Kristen Monroe’s research on altruism and moral choice -- The Heart of Altruism (1996), The Hand of Compassion (2004), and Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide (2012) -- has demonstrated how identity trumps choice, setting a menu of options that sets and delineates the range of choices available to us cognitively, not just morally. Her work identifies limitations in rational choice theory, cost-benefit analysis, psychology, and evolutionary biology, and modifies traditional philosophical understandings of how we make moral choices, challenging assumptions underlying Utilitarianism and Kantian ethical theory. Prof. Mneesha Gellman, President of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association, will also discuss her research on human rights and democratization.
Recording of the Webinar
SPEAKERS
Kristen Monroe
Kristen Monroe is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC Irvine and founding Director of its Ethics Center. With over 22 books on politics, ethics, and psychology, Monroe is best known for her award-winning trilogy on altruism and moral choice. Her scholarly honors include numerous awards from the International Society of Political Psychology (past president) and the American Political Science Association (past vice-president), plus fellowships to The American Academy in Berlin, and Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her most recent books are On Ethics and Economics (with Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow), The Unspoken Morality of Childhood (2022), and When Conscience Calls: Moral Courage in Times of Confusion and Despair (2023). Politics, Principle and Standing Up to Donald Trump: Moral Courage and the Republican Party, written with students in the UCI Ethics Center mentoring program, is due out later in 2024. Prof. Monroe is a past president of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
Mneesha Gellman
Mneesha Gellman is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research spans human rights, democratization, and education politics across the globe. She serves as an expert witness on El Salvador and Mexico in asylum proceedings in US immigration courts, and is the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative, which brings a BA pathway to people incarcerated in Massachusetts. Dr. Gellman is the current President (2023-2024) of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
Ann Marie Clark
Ann Marie Clark is Professor of Political Science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. She has published a number of articles and books on international human rights ideas and law in international politics, and the work of nongovernmental actors in fostering human rights change at the global level. She has held positions as a residential Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, as a visiting scholar at Columbia University, and in Fall 2021 she was Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Human Rights and Social Justice at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, University of Ottawa. Her most recent book is Demands of Conscience: The Creation of a Global Human Rights Practice (2022). Prof. Clark is currently Vice-President-elect of the Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association.
HOST
John Dale
He is Director of Movement Engaged Research Hub, Center for Social Science Research at George Mason University and Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology (GMU).
Event Sponsors
