The University of Connecticut’s School of Law, in conjunction with the Human Rights Institute, is hosting a conference on Human Rights in the USA from Thursday, Oct. 22, through Saturday, Oct. 24.

The conference will take place on two sites – Thursday and Friday at the School of Law in Hartford and Saturday on the Storrs campus – and will feature 80 speakers, including Kathy Martinez, President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary for disability employment.

Conference participants will evaluate how international human rights laws and norms are presently applied in the U.S. and will suggest recommendations for the future. Organizers of the conference say it will focus on human rights litigation and recent legal innovations, while contextualizing the law by examining the wider impact of human rights campaigns on gender violence, racism, poverty, and health care.

Events will kick off on Thursday at 4 p.m. in the William R. Davis Courtroom at the law school’s Hartford campus, with a panel introduced by University President Michael Hogan.  Dorothy Q. Thomas, a visiting fellow from the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Human Rights, will open the discussion by delivering the 2009 Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights. Her lecture is titled “Are Americans Human?: An Ex-Patriot’s Guide to the Future of Progressive Politics in the U.S.”

A second keynote speaker for the event will be Linda K. Kerber, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair of Early American History and a lecturer from the University of Iowa. Her lecture, “Universal Human Rights and the Asymmetries of Citizenship,” will take place Saturday, Oct. 24, in the Rome Ballroom on the Storrs campus, beginning at 9 a.m.

The registration form and complete schedule of events can be found at the conference website.

For more information:

Michael Kirk (860) 486-0715