Samuel Moyn to lecture on human rights and the Holocaust

The noted intellectual historian will be speaking in the Numen Lumen Pavilion March 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Samuel Moyn, James Bryce Professor of European Legal History at Columbia University, will be giving a public lecture on the Holocaust and human rights at Elon University on Thursday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m. The program will be held in Elon’s Numen Lumen Pavilion.

Moyn’s lecture is titled “How Did the Holocaust and Human Rights Intersect (and Was It a Good Thing)?” He will consider the relationship between the Holocaust and its memory, on the one hand, and the rise of human rights norms and movements, on the other. Surveying the post-World War II era, he will ask why not only Holocaust consciousness but also human rights activism came so late.

Moyn has taught at Columbia University since 2001. His scholarship focuses on modern European intellectual history—with special interests in France and Germany, political and legal thought, historical and critical theory, and Jewish studies–and on the history of human rights.  His latest book is titled Human Rights and the Use of History

The program is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Elon’s Department of Philosophy and the Lori and Eric Sklut Emerging Scholar in Jewish Studies Fund.