Two former U.S. ambassadors and a New York Times editorialist will participate in a dialogue about torture and terror in the 21st century on Thursday, Oct. 23, from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in 238 Herald R. Clark Building on the Brigham Young University campus.
Editorialist Bill Berkeley and former ambassadors to Croatia and Uganda Peter W. Galbraith and E. Michael Southwick will address the topic "Human Rights and Wrongs: The Search for Justice."
They will be joined by Donald W. Shriver Jr., a scholar and author of 12 books who was the William E. Dodge Professor of Applied Christianity and former president of the Union Theological Seminary in New York.
"We see this as an opportunity for students, faculty and the local public to join an intelligent, open-ended and somewhat spontaneous dialogue with those who have a specialty in the field," said Darren Hawkins, associate professor of political science who has published several articles on human rights in Latin America.
Galbraith is a professor at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Berkeley also works as a freelance journalist and authored the book, "The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa," which explores Africa's worst atrocities over the past 20 years.
Southwick was former deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs and a delegate at the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in April 2003.
The schedule for the dialogue includes:
Galbraith's lecture titled "The United States and Iraq: The Collision of Realpolitik and Human Rights" at 11 a.m. A question-and-answer session will follow.
Galbraith, Berkeley, Shriver and Southwick's participation in the panel discussion, "U.S. Policy and Gross, Systematic Human Rights Abuses," at noon. Hawkins will moderate the discussion and will field questions for the panel.
A film on a human rights topic to be shown at 1:30 p.m.
A roundtable discussion of the film with the panelists and audience to start at 2:30 p.m. The dialogue is sponsored by BYU's Amnesty International chapter and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies. For more information, contact Darren Hawkins at darren_hawkins@byu.edu.
Writer: Lee Simons
