Robert 69' and Margaret Pastor Lecture in International Affairs: Disappearing Human Rights: Can the "Indispensable Nation" Still Lead?

Robert 69' and Margaret Pastor Lecture in International Affairs welcomes award-winning journalist on U.S foreign affairs and human rights, Mark Danner. 

Since the Second World War and the Nuremberg Trials, the United States has put itself forward as a leader in promoting human rights and democracy-building in its foreign policy. The human rights idea animated the early years of the United Nations and its "rules-based international order" and reached a kind of apogee during the administration of President Jimmy Carter. It is a paradox that the end of the Cold War and the coming of American hegemony led not to a golden age of human rights but a dark history of ignoring genocides, launching illegal wars and killing civilians with drones and other new technologies. Given this recent history, how can the United States still effectively promote a human rights agenda?