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Annual Peterson Lecture Focuses on Human Rights

SEPT. 21, 2009 | The University of Wisconsin-River Falls history and philosophy department will host the Edward N. Peterson Lecture Series on Wednesday, Oct. 21 from 3:30 to 6 p.m. in the Kleinpell Fine Arts building.

Eric D. Weitz, a professor at the University of Minnesota, will present “Human Rights: A Revisionist History from the French Revolution to the Present.” Weitz’s presentation will explore why historians have suddenly discovered human rights. Historians, he writes, have been “very good at the crimes side of the ledger. We write and teach about wars, revolutions, dictatorships, and genocides. Where there has been violence, the historians come, hard on the heels of peacemakers.”

Human rights, says Weitz, has historically been a field for lawyers, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, non-governmental organizations and activists. Weitz will present a more critical and complex history of human rights that is international in scope and that “dismantles the teleology of empires to nation-states and intertwines crimes and rights into a common narrative.”

The event starts with refreshments and conversation from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Kleinpell Fine Arts building lobby followed by the lecture from 4:30 to 6 p.m. the Abbott Concert Hall, Room 131 of the Kleinpell Fine Arts building.

This lecture is held annually and is free and open to the general public. The co-sponsor for this event is the Edward N. Peterson Lecture Series Endowment. For more information please contact the UWRF history and philosophy department at 715-425-3164 or visit www.uwrf.edu/history.

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