TRN 152: Justice and Global Conflict
What exactly are “human rights”? Can we define and promote concepts of “universal justice” across time and place? How do human rights and ideas about justice interact with the realities of conflict and security in international relations? This course is designed to explore some of the myriad issues shaping the relationships between human rights, principles of justice, and the realities of conflict: focusing on both historical and contemporary international events. We will look at some basic philosophical and political conceptions, as well as how select major conflicts affected and affect the idea and reality of these notions over time. Within these parameters, we will tackle an array of complex and challenging themes, including colonialism, nationalism, radical ideologies, revolution, war, genocide, and sovereignty. Ultimately, this course is designed to introduce students to the perpetual struggles of humanity against tyranny and conflict in all its manifestations. In doing so, it should provide an expansive and wide-ranging context for the study of international relations through global history, but also through an interdisciplinary approach. Particular attention will be given to how nations and the international order have developed, or failed to develop, norms to preserve and promote human rights and the principles of “universal” justice. With a better understanding of historical events, we can then turn to more contemporary examples: exploring different narratives on security, human rights, and justice around the world. Using a “global lens” wherever possible, this course will hopefully facilitate an understanding of multiple – sometimes disagreeable – perspectives and narratives. The inherent controversies of that kind of approach will be embraced in order to discourage simplistic narratives of extremely complicated ideas and events, which makes meaningful discussion and change more difficult. In that light, maybe Walt Whitman was right when he said, “History’s not “was”. It’s “is”.