Last Thursday, Feb. 13, more than 60 people attended a lecture by Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago Divinity School, entitled, “Women and Violence: A Catholic Understanding of Human Rights.” The event was part of last week’s “Ending Violence Against Women” program, organized by the College of Arts and Sciences.
“The rights talk, which we generally have in the United States in our culture, isn’t as rich as the conversation about human dignity,” said Eloise Buker, Ph.D, director of the women’s studies program, regarding the focus of Elshtain’s lecture. “Human dignity has something important to offer to rights talk–it’s a richer read. And notions of human dignity come from Catholic social thought. A narrow version of rights talk doesn’t deal with what is unique about a human person. It treats all persons as similar.”
Elshtain spoke about the fragility of the human body and the importance of nurturing human relationships.
She also said that human rights should not allow people to reduce others to mere needs and ignore a call to a higher moral code. She also spoke about women working for human rights in Latin America, Iran and Somalia.
“There are particular violations that are meted out, and when you consider those violations, the language of rights, even a very powerful account of rights, it seems so inadequate when you’re confronted with these horrors,” Elshtain said. “And it seems so because something so deep is here being violated, something intrinsic to our humanity.”
She then invoked the worlds of Pope John Paul II, saying, “When we find ourselves face to face with another human being, we must, in his words, ‘pause at the irreducible.’ Many do not pause. Many do far worse.”
In a question-and-answer session that followed her remarks, Elshtain spoke about the nature of argument and diversity in contemporary America, as well as the notion of authority.
Answering a question about the issue of affirmative action, she pointed out that, “We are not paying very much attention to the kind of cultural environment we want to create, within which diversity is a complex phenomenon. They certainly have to do with people of different races, men and women, different ethnic backgrounds, but it also has to do with factors that are not officially, for the most part, taken into account–including one of the most interesting, which is religious diversity.”
She also said college admissions boards are not permitted to explore applicant’s socioeconomic background and simply do not bother with aspects like previous life experience. “I think what you require is an openness to diversity that doesn’t accept the kind of quotas that make admissions offices lazy.
