Human Rights GOVT 445-001, Fall 2015 George Mason University Tuesday & Thursday 3:00-4:15 PM in Founders 310 Professor: Joseph Kochanek (email: jkochane@gmu.edu) Meeting Hours in Arlington: Tuesday, 4:30-5:30 PM This course is divided into two main sections. The first section will analyze human rights from a theoretical perspective, considering ideas from past centuries as well as arguments from the last halfcentury or so. The second section will analyze the role of international institutions in fostering human rights, considering political practice as well as political theory. The texts for this course have been ordered by the George Mason Bookstore. Other readings on this syllabus will be available either through the course website or through the George Mason Library Website. Books available at the bookstore: 1) Forsythe, David, Human Rights in International Relations. CUP, 3 rd ed. (2012). 2) Durch, William, ed. UN Peacekeeping, American Politics, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s. New York: St. Martin s. 3) Hayden, Patrick, ed, The Philosophy of Human Rights. St. Paul, MN: Paragon, 2001. 4) Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Indianapolis: Hackett (ed. Ellington). 5) Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap, 2010. Course Requirements: 1) Attendance to class and well-informed participation in class discussions. 2) Three papers. The first paper will be 900-1100 words long, and will be due September 24. The second and third papers will be 1800-2200 words each, and will be due October 27 and December 10. You will receive topics two weeks before the due date. 3) Weekly Assignments. A brief assignment will be given to open a class each week. The assignment will be based on the readings for that week. 4) Final Exam. The final exam is scheduled for Thursday, December 17, at 1:30 PM. Grading Breakdown: Weekly Assignments: 10% Class Participation: 10% Paper One: 10% Paper Two: 20% Paper Three: 20% Final Exam: 30% Schedule of Readings: Week One: Introduction What are rights? What is at stake in thinking of rights as political rights, or natural rights? How do these modes of thinking about rights inform our conception of human rights? Should they? Tuesday, September 1: Locke, Second Treatise (excerpts), in Hayden, 71-79. Thursday, September 3: Moyn, prologue and chapter one. Thursday, September 3: Forsythe, chapter one.
Week Two: Kant and Mill Debates about human rights are often grounded in debates about moral philosophy. What is the categorical imperative, as described by Kant, and why might one see an iteration of the categorical imperative as foundational for human rights? Does utilitarianism help inform ideas of human rights, or is it better considered as in tension with human rights? Tuesday, September 8: Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Thursday, September 10: Mill, On Utilitarianism II, V; On Liberty VI. Week Three: Theories of Human Rights after 1948 Should human rights be conceived with respect to what is possible, or with respect to what is ideal? What does the capabilities approach add to our understanding of human rights? What do the capabilities share in common, beyond the mere term capability? Tuesday, September 15: Maurice Cranston, Human Rights, Real and Imagined, in Hayden, 163-173. Tuesday, September 15: Thomas Pogge, How Should Human Rights Be Conceived? in Hayden, 187-211. Tuesday, September 15: Martha Nussbaum, Capabilities and Human Rights, in Hayden 212-240. Thursday, September 17: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, in Hayden, 353-366. Thursday, September 17: Forsythe, chapter two. Week Four: Growing Pains: Human Rights in the Mid-20 th Century What is the place of politics in our conception of human rights? Does politics sustain human rights, or threaten to usurp the priority of human rights? Is national self-determination best thought of in terms of human rights? If so, how if not, why not? Tuesday, September 22: Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, chapter nine. Tuesday, September 22: Moyn, chapter two. Thursday, September 24: Moyn, chapter three. Week Five: Poverty and Human Rights In what sense, if at all, is severe poverty a human rights violation? What duties fall upon those in a position to render aid, if we presume that severe poverty is a human rights violation? Tuesday, September 29: Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:3 (1972), 229-243. Tuesday, September 29: Andrew Kuper and Peter Singer, Debate: Global Poverty Relief, Ethics and International Affairs 16:1 (2002), 107-128. Tuesday, September 29: Thomas Pogge, Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation, UNESCO Poverty Project, Ethical and Human Rights Dimensions of Poverty: Towards a New Paradigm in the Fight Against Poverty, 2003. Thursday, October 1: Forsythe, chapter eight.
Week Six: Critical Approaches to Human Rights How (if at all) is the public/private distinction relevant to human rights? Can the distinction be morally or philosophically justified? Is moral philosophy even the right mode of justification? How stable (or useful) is philosophy as a ground for human rights? Are there alternatives? Tuesday, October 6: Arati Rao, Right in the Home: Feminist Theoretical Perspectives on International Human Rights, in Hayden 505-525. Tuesday, October 6: Catherine MacKinnon, Rape, Genocide, and Women s Human Rights, in Hayden, 526-546. Thursday, October 8: Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in Hayden 241-257. Thursday, October 8: Jacques Derrida, Wears and Tears (Tableau of an Ageless World, in Hayden, 258-268. Thursday, October 8: Julie Mertus, The Rejection of Human Rights Framings: The Case of LGBT Advocacy in the US, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Nov., 2007), 1036-1064. Week Seven: Human Rights and International Institutions What is the role of the United Nations in fostering human rights, and how has it changed? Why has criminal justice seemed to offer a model for enforcing human rights, and what difficulties emerge with the use of this model? What alternatives exist to the criminal justice model? Thursday, October 15: Forsythe, chapters three, four, five, and seven. Week Eight: Human Rights and Foreign Policy Should states pursue human rights goals through their foreign policy? Would this be effective? Is it even possible? Or is it dangerous? Quite apart from ethical claims, separate from politics, is there a long-term congruence between values such as human rights and the national interest? Tuesday, October 20: Forsythe, chapter six. Tuesday, October 20: Stanley Hoffmann, Reaching for the Most Difficult: Human Rights as a Foreign Policy Goal, Daedalus, 112:4 (Fall, 1983), 19-49. Thursday, October 22: Moyn, chapter four. Week Nine: Human Rights in Latin America during and after the Cold War How did the end of the Cold War shape American and Soviet behavior in Latin America? How did the rise of non-state actors shape the observance of human rights in the last half of the 20 th century in Latin America? Tuesday. October 27: Fen Osler Hampson, The Pursuit of Human Rights: The United States in El Salvador, in Durch, 69-102. Tuesday. October 27: Cath Collins, Grounding Global Justice: International Networks and Domestic Human Rights Accountability in Chile and El Salvador, Journal of Latin American Studies 38:4 (Nov., 2006), 711-738. Thursday, October 29: Sonia Cardenas, "A Regional Survey" from Human Rights in Latin America (2010), 21-51.
Week Ten: Politics and International Intervention in Rwanda and Somalia How did the history and geography of each of these countries shape their respective human rights crises? What is the significance of the use of chapter VII of the UN Charter in the international interventions in Rwanda and Somalia? What do these crises reveal about the ability of UNSC intervention to foster human rights? Tuesday, November 3: William Durch, Introduction to Anarchy, Humanitarian Intervention and State-Building in Somalia, in Durch, 311-365. Tuesday, November 3: Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, Philadelphia Inquirer, November-December, 1997 (29 chapters), Thursday, November 5: J. Matthew Vaccaro, The Politics of Genocide: Peacekeeping and Disaster Relief in Rwanda, in Durch, 367-407. Thursday, November 5: Samantha Power, Bystanders to Genocide, Atlantic Monthly, September 2001 Week Eleven: Human Rights and the Asian Values Debate What are the deep, underlying values identified by Taylor as shared amongst cultures? Do you believe these values can serve as the ground for a conception of human rights? Is the moral primacy of the individual as essential element of human rights? Tuesday, November 10: Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights, 167-189 (chapter twelve). Tuesday, November 10: Fernando Tesón, International Human Rights and Cultural Relativism, in Hayden, 379-396. Tuesday, November 10: Xiaorong Li, Asian Values and the Universality of Human Rights, in Hayden, 397-408. Tuesday, November 10: Charles Taylor, A World Consensus on Human Rights? in Hayden, 409-423. Thursday, November 12: Fareed Zakaria, A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew, Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994). Week Twelve: Human Rights, the UN, and the Former Yugoslavia What is meant by the principle of self-determination? What is at stake in thinking of rights in terms of peoples? What alternative loci are there for rights, other than peoples? More generally, what is the status of group rights? Tuesday, November 17: William Durch and James Schear, Faultlines: UN Operations in the Former Yugoslavia, in Durch, 193-274. Thursday, November 19: James Crawford, The Rights of Peoples: Peoples or Governments? in Hayden, 427-444. Thursday, November 19: Will Kymlicka, The Good, the Bad, and the Intolerable: Minority Group Rights, in Hayden, 445-462. Thursday, November 19: Vienna Declaration, Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National, Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities, Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all in Hayden, 641-659.
Week Thirteen: Kosovo: Lessons Learned? What was the legal status of the intervention in Kosovo? What is at stake in the distinction between legality and legitimacy? How does increasing acceptance of the legitimacy of human rights claims shape our ideas about conventional state sovereignty? Tuesday, November 24: Independent International Commission on Kosovo. The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned Oxford: OUP, 2000 Tuesday, November 24: James Nickel, What s Wrong with Ethnic Cleansing, in Hayden, 465-477. Tuesday, November 24: Michael Smith, Humanitarian Intervention: An Overview of the Ethical Issues, in Hayden, 478-501. Week Fourteen: The Responsibility to Protect How do the authors of Responsibility to Protect define sovereignty? What are the implications of this definition for human rights? If adopted in full by the international community, how, specifically, would the Responsibility to Protect help foster the protection of human rights? Tuesday, December 1: International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The Responsibility to Protect Ottawa: International Development and Research Center, 2001. Thursday, December 3: Moyn, chapter four. Week Fifteen: Conclusion Conceptions of human rights have changed in the last 50 years: what is in store for the next 50 years? How will the next generation of human rights scholars analyze recent events in Syria? How would the Responsibility to Protect doctrine shape decisions about intervention in Syria? Tuesday, December 8: Raymond A. Hinnebusch and Tina Zintl Syria from Reform to Revolt. Volume 1, Political Economy and International Relations, 285-310. Tuesday, December 8: Reinoud Leenders, How the Syrian Regime Outsmarted Its Enemies, Current History 112:758 (December, 2013), 331-337. Tuesday, December 8: Frederic C. Hof, Syria: Stopping the Carnage Atlantic Council, December 18, 2013. Tuesday, December 8: Asli U. Bali and Aziz Rana, Why There is No Military Solution to the Syrian Conflict, Jadaliyya, May 13, 2013. Thursday, December 10: Forsythe, chapter nine. Thursday, December 10: Moyn, epilogue. Academic Ethics: GMU is an Honor Code university; please see the Office for Academic Integrity for a full description of the code and the honor committee process. The principle of academic integrity is taken very seriously and violations are treated gravely. What does academic integrity mean in this course? Essentially this: when you are responsible for a task, you will perform that task. When you rely on someone else s work in an aspect of the performance of that task, you will give full credit in the proper, accepted form. Another aspect of academic integrity is the free play of ideas. Vigorous discussion and debate are encouraged in this course, with the firm expectation that all aspects of the class will be conducted with civility and respect for differing ideas, perspectives, and traditions. When in doubt (of any kind) please ask for guidance and clarification. Electronic Devices: Laptops and similar devices may be used for taking notes or for consulting assigned texts in electronic format. Please do not use cellular phones or similar devices in the classroom.
Email: Mason uses only Mason e-mail accounts to communicate with enrolled students. Students must activate their Mason e-mail account, use it to communicate with their department and other administrative units, and check it regularly for important university information including messages related to this class. Disability resources: If you are a student with a disability and you need academic accommodations, please see me and contact the Office of Disability Services at 703.993.2474 or ods.gmu.edu. All academic accommodations must be arranged through that office. Important deadlines for this semester: Students are responsible for verifying their enrollment in this class. Schedule adjustments should be made by the deadlines published in the Schedule of Classes. Last Day to Add: September 8, 2015 Last Day to Drop: October 2, 2015 After the last day to drop a class, withdrawing from this class requires the approval of the Dean and is only allowed for non-academic reasons.