Why are human rights not part of debates about domestic public policy and legal reform in the United States? The United States played a leading role in the creation of the post-World War II international human rights system and has often championed human rights as a foreign policy goal. Yet human rights have been marginal to debates about social and economic equality at home. We will examine the history of human rights in the United States since the New Deal, asking how and why the United States’ embrace of human rights became limited to political and civil rights and excluded other kinds of human rights. We will also examine the consequences of this narrower framework, as well as why human rights may now be coming home.
Junior Seminars are intense writing seminars which focus on the research area of the faculty member teaching the course.
Junior seminars fulfill upper division requirements for the major.
Subfield: American Politics
Political Science Majors of Junior and Senior status (must be 3rd or 4th year students with at least 60 units completed) with a minimum overall UC GPA of 3.3. Students must place themselves on the waitlist through CalCentral in Phase II. Priority may be given to students who have not yet taken a junior seminar.