Why human rights advocates must get better at telling us THEY CARE.
Roundtable Proposal - The 2023 Joint conference of The Social Practice of Human Rights Conference & 6th International Conference on the Right to Development, University of Dayton, Ohio, Nov 4-6, 2023
Human rights advocates have a moral duty to tell us they care about humanity. And they’re failing, according to cognitive scientist George Lakoff.1 We all think with our brains. Two components of a human right - material and moral - must be physically located in a human brain for the right to make sense. Progressives too often take their “care” for humanity for granted. 1948 UN representatives framed human rights around care. So what’s preventing human rights professionals from saying they care when the UDHR2 Preamble and Articles 1, 2, 29, and 30 clearly say we should? I don’t know, but “progressive measures”3 must include repeatedly proclaiming our moral commitment to empathy and responsibility.
Cognitive scientists George Lakoff and Elizabeth Wehling think it is how human rights professionals were taught.4 In 2012, they wrote, “Traditional liberal discourse strategies are inconsistent with the science of how reason really works.” For example, I was recently invited to a University of Dayton Human Rights Center “teach-in” on why business and engineering students should consider a human rights minor. The teach-in consisted of a panel of human rights studies professors, business professors, and an engineering student. Dr. Maria Vivero, a business professor, and HRS Senior Noah Aschemeier were the only panelists who framed their conversation about why students should add a human rights minor to their degrees around the moral duty to care and well-being.
Therefore, I propose a Roundtable Discussion on “Why human rights advocates must get better at telling everyone THEY CARE” at the 2023 Joint Conference of The Social Practice of Human Rights Conference and the 6th International Conference on the Right to Development. The UDHR framed human rights around the duty to care. Say it. We must proclaim our duty to care!
Empathy Surplus Network USA, Lakoff’s Words to Use to Frame Our Solutions, “Reflexivity and the Brain,” p. 14, https://proempathy.us/glakoff
United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, https://proempathy.us/IUDHRbk
IBID., Preamble, “Progressive measures” are undergirded by the core progressive values of mutual commitment to govern with empathy for and responsibility to humanity.
Lakoff, George and Wehling, Elisabeth, The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, Part I: The Basics, Chapter 5, Your Language, first paragraph, p. 37, Free Press, New York, 2012