The Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights
Gladstein Visiting Professorship
The Gladstein Visiting Professor is a distinguished scholar with an international standing in the study of human rights, who spends one semester each year at UConn. During that time, he or she delivers a major public lecture, teaches a seminar in his or her specialty, and consults with the faculty about the direction of UConn's human rights program and about developing new courses in human rights.
Enquiries regarding the Visiting Professorship can be made to the Chair of the Gladstein Committee, Professor Richard A. Wilson, humanrights@uconn.edu.
Gladstein Visiting Professor - Fall 2009
David L. Richards
Professor Richards' work focuses on government respect for human rights. One of his primary interests is human rights measurement, and he is Co-Director of the CIRI Human Rights Data Project (www.humanrightsdata.org), which annually rates government respect for 15 internationally-recognized human rights in 195 countries.
He has published research studying government respect for human rights in a variety of journals and books. This research utilizes a variety of lenses through which to examine respect for human rights, including economic globalization, democratic institutions such as national elections and political parties, banking crises, the end of the Cold War, and information globalization.
Among his most recent research projects are: a global study of violence against women; several studies of the distribution and formation of citizen attitudes towards human rights, particularly torture, both globally and within the United States, specifically; an examination of the de jure and de facto status of non-derogable human rights; and the measurement of effort to respect economic human rights .
His work has been funded multiple times by the National Science Foundation and The World Bank, among others. Recently, Professor Richards served on the advisory board for UNIFEM's Progress of the World's Women: 2008 report.
Click Here to Visit Dr. Richards’ Personal Website.
Click Here to Visit Dr. Richards’ Website at the University of Memphis.
Previous Distinguished Visiting Gladstein Professors
Fall 2008
Zakes Mda, Novelist
Zakes Mda is a South African writer of plays, novels, poems, and articles for academic journals and newspapers. His creative work also includes painting works of art, theatre and film productions.
He has won numerous awards for his work, including the 2005 Notable Books Award of the American Library Association and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Africa Region and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award.
He divides his time between South Africa and the United States, working as a professor of creative writing at Ohio University, a beekeeper in the Eastern Cape, a dramaturge at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, and a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Sophiatown, Johannesburg.
Fall 2007
David P. Forsythe, University of Nebraska
Fall 2006
Dr. Ruti Teitel, New York Law School
Spring 2006
Dr. Elizabeth Jelin, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fall 2004
Dr. Michael Freeman, University of Essex, UK
Dr. Celina Romany, Inter-American University School of Law, Puerto Rico
Fall 2003
Dr. Leslye Obiora
Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights
Fall 2002
Dr. Jack Donnelly
Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights
Fall 2001
Dr. Rhoda Howard-Hassmann
Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights
Fall 2000
Dr. Wiktor Osiatynski
Marsha Lilien Gladstein Visiting Professor of Human Rights