Oxford Amnesty Lectures is one of the world's leading lecture series. It is an independent charity created to sustain debate about human rights in the academic and wider community. Each year speakers of international reputation are invited to lecture in Oxford on a theme related to human rights. To date OAL has raised over £100,000 for Amnesty International.
Please note, the lectures are not part of Amnesty International and they are not University events. OAL is a registered charity.
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Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2010 aims to inject some historical knowledge into the current debate about human rights. The Enlightenment – the work of figures such as Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Kant, Paine, Bentham, Wollstonecraft – is often thought of as the defining moment for human rights. In George Orwell's 1984, Winston Smith explains that there is one phrase that it is impossible to translate into Newspeak, namely Jefferson's 1776 Declaration of Independence – a key Enlightenment text – which begins: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...'.
It seems we are no longer sure whether these truths are self-evident, nor quite what they might mean today. In 2006, the Wall Street Journal declared in relation to the Iraq War that: 'We are not fighting for George Bush or Wal-Mart alone, but also for the very notion of the Enlightenment.'.
As previous series of Oxford Amnesty Lectures have demonstrated, critics have often questioned the universality of human rights. This series will invite speakers to explore both the historical contexts from which rights emerged, and what an understanding of this history might mean for their relevance and, more importantly, their status as truths, today.
Topics to be covered include:
- Why did human rights emerge when and where they did?
- What was meant by the right to 'Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness' and by 'Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité'?
- How could Enlightenment thinkers tolerate slavery?
- Why were many Enlightenment thinkers so critical of organised religion?
- Are human rights an article of faith?
- Is the Enlightenment legacy an asset or a liability?
- What connects the Declarations of 1776 (US), 1789 (France) and 1948 (UN)?
- Are human rights still self-evident truths today?
Tickets will be on sale in December 2009.

