human rights — Bunk History

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

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.

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

Students demonstrating against the Shah of Iran, Washington, DC, 1979.

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

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

The shrouded bodies of people killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

“Genocide” Is the Wrong Word

We reach for the term when we want to condemn the worst crimes, but the UN’s Genocide Convention excuses more perpetrators of mass murder than it condemns.

by James Robins via The New Republic on November 21, 2023

Jimmy Carter Stood up for Palestinians. Why Won’t Today’s Democrats?

At the height of George W. Bush’s War on Terror, Jimmy Carter had the courage to call out Israel for its human rights abuses.

by Alex Skopic via Current Affairs on November 9, 2023

Olivier Bancoult, center, the leader of the Chagos Refugee Group, stands on Capitol Hill with Roger Alexis, a Chagossian, left, and Philip Ah-Chuen, a Mauritian advisor to the group. They met last week with lawmakers to demand reparations and an apology for the forced removal of thousands of native inhabitants from the Chagos Islands in the 1960s and 1970s to make room for a U.S. military base.

They Were Deported to Build a U.S. Naval Base. Now They Want Reparations.

50 years after native inhabitants of the Chagos Islands were forced out to make room for a military base, a Chagossian leader came to D.C. seeking reparations.

by DeNeen L. Brown via Washington Post on October 8, 2023

The Spanish-Speaking William F. Buckley

Buckley’s seldom-acknowledged fluency in Spanish shaped his worldview—including his admiration for dictators from Spain to Chile and beyond.

by Bécquer Seguín via Dissent on September 28, 2023

Chilean President Gabriel Boric at the forty-seventh anniversary of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt.

The Pinochet-Era Debt that the United States Still Hasn’t Settled

Chile’s president was in Washington over the weekend to mark a grim anniversary. Congress is still asking questions about the U.S. role in the 1973 coup.

by Pablo Manríquez via The New Republic on September 27, 2023

Smoke pours from La Moneda, the Chilean presidential palace, during the military coup.

50 Years After “the Other 9/11”: Remembering the Chilean Coup

Some personal reflections on history, memory, and the survival of democracies.

by Ariel Dorfman via The Nation on September 11, 2023

Friedrich Hayek listens to the president of the Centro de Estudios Públicos in Chile, Jorge Cauas, speak in April 1981.

Neoliberal Economists Like Milton Friedman Cheered on Augusto Pinochet’s Dictatorship

Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman helped devise Pinochet's economic agenda and endorsed the brutal repression that was needed to force it through.

by Jessica Whyte via Jacobin on September 11, 2023

Mexican president José López Portillo at a press conference on May 19, 1980.

Declassified Documents Uncover Yet Another Mexican President’s CIA Ties

Recently declassified documents have exposed former Mexican president José López Portillo as a CIA asset.

by Fernando Herrera Calderón via Jacobin on June 13, 2023

Zoomed in picture of Pat Robertson's face.

Pat Robertson’s Genocidal God Has Called Him Home

The political preacher who made the religion look bad.

by Jeet Heer via The Nation on June 9, 2023

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