Education as a Tool in Preventing Violent Conflict:
Suggestions for the International Criminal Court
Featuring
Martha Minow
Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor, Harvard Law School
To view the video from this event, please click here.
When political leaders, scholars, and activists consider ways to prevent genocide and mass atrocities, their options include monitoring and early warning systems, global diplomacy and military forces for humanitarian intervention, and efforts to strengthen the rule of law. Education usually falls at the end of the list, but it could be the most important way to prevent mass violence. The International Criminal Court offers innovative opportunities to engage 110 member nations in collaborative educational efforts. In this lecture, Minow will consider the possibilities afforded by the Rome Statute, the leadership of the ICC prosecutor, and the benefits and limits of education in preventing violent conflict.
Martha Minow is an expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities. At Harvard Law School since 1981, she teaches civil procedure and constitutional law and writes and teaches about law, culture, and narrative. She served on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo and helped launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. In partnership with the Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology, she has worked to increase access to the curriculum for students with disabilities.
Minow’s books include Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good; Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence; Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics and Law; and Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law. Her latest book, In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Educational Landmark, will be published in 2010.
Free and open to the public.
Past Hesburgh Lecturers:
- Shirin Ebadi, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, lawyer and human rights advocate in Iran
- Rev. Bryan Hehir, Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
- Congressman Lee Hamilton, former vice-chair of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks & former chairman/ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
- Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
- Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spellman Rockefeller Professor of Social Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School
- Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, The University of Chicago Law School
- Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance & Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics
- Michael Ignatieff, Member of Canadian Parliament and former director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights and Policy, Harvard University
- Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
- Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University
- Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology and the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University
- Shashi Tharoor, author and former Under-Secretary-General, United Nations
- Stanley Hoffmann, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University
