Menu
Idea

human rights

199
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Photo of Jimmy Carter.

Carter and Chile: How Humanitarian was the President?

The 'human rights president' had some tough political decisions to make regarding Augusto Pinochet in 1979.
by Peter Kornbluh via Responsible Statecraft on January 10, 2025
Reinhold Niebuhr holding court in New York, 1949

Liberal Protestants and American Politics

How liberal Protestants helped to shape the US's views on liberalism, human rights, and current political divides.
by Gale Kenny via The New Rambler on July 21, 2022
A drone flying low

Slouching Toward Humanity

Historian Samuel Moyn contends that efforts to conduct war humanely have only perpetuated it. But the solution must lie in politics, not a sacrifice of human rights.
by Anthony Dworkin via Boston Review on September 16, 2021

The World’s Human Rights Convention and the Paradox of American Abolitionism

An inquiry into a utopian vision of abolitionism.
by Bennett Parten via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on July 29, 2020

Human Rights and Neoliberalism

How is it that the era of neoliberalism coincides almost perfectly with the triumphant rise of a discourse of human rights?
by Nils Gilman via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 8, 2018
Demonstrators protesting Trump's immigration policy toward Muslims outside the Supreme Court.

Human Rights in the Era of Trump

The era of Trump could mark the recovery in American civil society of the moral and political power of global human rights.
by Mark Philip Bradley via Perspectives on History on January 31, 2017

Mrs. Roosevelt's Revolution

In the wake of the Second World War, Eleanor Roosevelt seized the moment and gave lasting life to the idea of universal human rights.
by Brian Urquhart via New York Review of Books on April 26, 2001
Caricature drawing of Charles Black

Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness

Traditional Supreme Court precedent may depend too much on substantive due process to safeguard human rights.
by Laurence H. Tribe via New York Review of Books on September 24, 1998
Screen capture of Carter at a podium giving his human right speech to university graduates.

Jimmy Carter Promotes Human Rights

Carter’s speech lays out his commitment to implement human rights into U.S. foreign policy.
via Voices & Visions on May 22, 1977
Alcatraz Island prison sign painted over to welcome Indians to Indian land.
partner

The Art of Stealing Human Rights

Native peoples face similar struggles with the federal governments in the U.S. and in Canada.
by Radio Free Alcatraz via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on January 3, 1970
Student stands in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square
partner

Students’ Tiananmen Protest Turned Deadly, Transforming U.S.-China Relations

Students in Beijing rallied for free speech and democratic reforms in 1989. The crackdown that followed altered U.S.-China relations.
via Retro Report on October 15, 2025
The Statue of Liberty as clouds roll in.

The End of Asylum

The second Trump administration has undone the division between political and economic migrants. Did it make sense to separate them to begin with?
by Mae Ngai via New York Review of Books on October 12, 2025
Cover of "The Age of Hitler"

Should We Move on From Hitler?

What happens when Hitler’s shadow fades—and what moral vision replaces it?
by Jeroen Bouterse via 3 Quarks Daily on October 9, 2025
Medical supplies for the front are piled up at a railway station in Ethiopia, in 1935.

This Black Educator Looked to Conflicts Abroad for Lessons on Fighting Racism at Home

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Spanish Civil War offered Melva L. Price an opportunity to examine the links between racism and fascism.
by Keisha N. Blain via Smithsonian Magazine on September 15, 2025
Henry Kissinger poses for a portrait in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing at the White House, Washington, DC, 1969. Photo © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Getty Images.

The Parallel Lives of Cold War Frenemies

On new biographies of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger.
by Hazem Kandil via History Today on September 9, 2025
Malcolm X

What Made Malcolm X Dangerous

He challenged the violence of US power, abroad and at home. His radical internationalism, from Congo to Palestine, speaks to our moment.
by Donté L. Stallworth via Jacobin on May 21, 2025
City workers get their lunch at the Horn & Hardart automat in New York City, ca 1940.

Choice and Its Discontents

Today no one on either side of the political spectrum would present themselves as an enemy of choice. Sophia Rosenfeld exposes the complex legacy of this idea.
by Sophia Rosenfeld, Daniel Falcone via Jacobin on April 22, 2025
Students demonstrating against the Shah of Iran, Washington, DC, 1979.
partner

Indifferent to the Fate of Freedom Elsewhere

Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters.
by Will Teague via HNN on March 11, 2025
A bulldozer juxtapositioned with destroyed buildings and barren land.

The Shrouded, Sinister History Of The Bulldozer

From India to the Amazon to Israel, bulldozers have left a path of destruction that offers a cautionary tale for how technology can be misused.
by Joe Zadeh via Noema on February 20, 2025
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House.

Trump’s Gaza Plan May Mark the End of the Postwar Order

Although the West has long tolerated forced expulsions when convenient, its postwar framework at least nominally rejected them. Now the US is endorsing it.
by Dirk Moses via Jacobin on February 16, 2025
A Guatemalan police officer standing in front of a memorial to Guatemalan civilians murdered during the country's civil war that depicts their photographs.

By Rejecting Evidence of Genocide in Gaza, the US Is Following a Familiar Pattern

For decades, Washington has denied, downplayed and rationalized atrocities by its allies.
by Stephen Zunes via New Lines on February 14, 2025
President Jimmy Carter seated at desk in Oval Office, hands steepled.

Jimmy Carter Held the Door Open for Neoliberalism

His unwillingness to take a radical stance forced him to respond to events by imposing austerity and doing little to strengthen labor.
by Sean T. Byrnes via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter Was the True Change Agent of the Cold War

There’s a reason the 39th president is still revered by former Soviet dissidents.
by Michael Hirsh via Foreign Policy on December 29, 2024
President Eisenhower sitting beside President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, September 26, 1960

The Foreign Policy Mistake the U.S. Keeps Repeating in the Middle East

In 2024, the U.S. faces some of the same challenges in the region that it did in 1954.
by Jordan Michael Smith via The New Republic on August 2, 2024
Yellow amaryllis flower in its bulb.

The American Colony of Jerusalem’s “Wild Flowers of Palestine” (ca. 1900–20)

Photographs of wild flowers taken by photographers from a Christian utopian community that settled in East Jerusalem at the turn of the 20th century.
by Adam Green, Hunter Dykes via The Public Domain Review on July 24, 2024
Frederick Douglas.

What Frederick Douglass Learned from an Irish Antislavery Activist

Frederick Douglass was introduced to the idea of universal human rights after traveling to Ireland and meeting with Irish nationalist leaders.
by Christine Kinealy via The Conversation on June 14, 2024
Bishop Desmond Tutu speaks at an International Conference Against Apartheid held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1986.

US Worker Movements and Direct Links Against Apartheid

Today's pro-Palestinian activists are utilizing anti-apartheid tactics from thirty years ago.
by Mattie Christine Webb via Black Perspectives on April 26, 2024
Hannah Ardent

Anatomist of Evil

Lyndsey Stonebridge’s book hurls us deeper into Hannah Arendt’s thinking, showing us that there was muddle rather than method at the heart of it.
by Stuart Jeffries via Literary Review on February 1, 2024
A photo collage of African American activists.

Black Activists Began Traveling to Palestine in the 1960s. They Never Stopped.

“This isn’t about being for one group or against another. It’s about basic human rights.”
by Nia T. Evans via Mother Jones on January 15, 2024
Henry Kissinger, 1975.

Henry Kissinger: The Declassified Obituary

The primary sources on Kissinger’s controversial legacy.
by Peter Kornbluh, Tom Blanton, William Burr via National Security Archive on November 29, 2023
View More
30 of
199

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History