Major Human Rights Events at UConn, October 1-4

The first week of October is jam-packed with Human Rights events at UConn!  Please join us for the following important events on campus!

All events are free and open to the public.

Monday, October 1, 2007

The Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights is being awarded on Monday, October 1 at 11 AM. Mental Disability Rights International and the Center for Justice and Accountability are this year’s recipients! The ceremony will take place in the plaza outside of the Dodd Research Center. (Rain location: Rome Ballroom, South Campus) Click here for more information.

Following the Thomas J. Dodd Prize for International Justice and Human Rights, the Dodd Research Center will host a special event including readings from the book, Letters from Nuremberg:  My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice, by members of the Dodd family with a book signing by Senator Chris Dodd and Lary Bloom, on Monday, October 1 at 1:30pm in Konover Auditorium, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. 

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

On Tuesday, October 2 at 4 PM, Harold Koh, Dean of the Yale Law School, will give the Raymond & Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture, “Repairing Our Human Rights Reputation.” The talk will be held in Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Research Center.

Dean Koh is a leading expert on international law and a prominent advocate of human and civil rights. From 1998 to 2001, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.  Before joining Yale, he practiced law at Covington and Burling and at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.  He has argued before the United States Supreme Court and testified before the U.S. Congress more than twenty times. He has been awarded ten honorary doctorates and two law school medals and has received more than twenty five awards for his human rights work. He is recipient of the 2005 Louis B. Sohn Award from the American Bar Association and the 2003 Wolfgang Friedmann Award from Columbia Law School for his lifetime achievements in International Law. He is author of eight books, including Transnational Legal Problems (with H. Steiner and D. Vagts) and The National Security Constitution, which won the American Political Science Association’s award as the best book on the American Presidency.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Lecture by Ela Gandhi (co-sponsored with the Asian American Studies Institute) at the Student Union Theatre, 4:30 pm.

Ela Ghandi, granddaughter of Mahatma Ghandi, has carried her family’s legacy and put those beliefs into practice for six decades of activism in South Africa.  During apartheid, she was banned from political activism and subjected to house arrest for nine years. In South Africa’s Parliament from 1994 to 2004, Ms. Gandhi aligned herself with the African National Congress party and represented the area of her birth in the KwaZulu Natal province near Durban. She founded the Gandhi Development Trust, developed a 24-hour program against domestic violence, and currently serves as Chancellor of Durban University of Technology. This event is free and open to the public, and sponsored by the Asian American Studies Institute, Asian American Cultural Center, Jain Center of Greater Hartford, Women’s Studies Program, Women’s Center, UNESCO Chair and Institute of Comparative Human Rights, India Studies Program, and the Department of History.