Dr. William Schulz

In observance of International Human Rights Day, UNC Asheville will host a talk on "Restoring America's Credibility: Human Rights in a Post-9/11 World" by renowned human rights advocate William Schulz. Schulz will speak at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 9, in UNC Asheville's Highsmith University Union Grotto. The event is free and open to the public.

Schulz has traveled the globe in pursuit of human rights. As executive director of Amnesty International USA from 1994-2006, Schulz visited refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan; prison cells in Monrovia, Liberia; Hong Kong board rooms; and other locations from Northern Ireland to Cuba examining human rights violations. Schulz also traveled more than 10,000 miles in the United States, spreading the human rights message and appearing on nearly every national television news program.

Schulz has received numerous awards for his work with Amnesty International USA, including Vanity's Fair's 2002 Hall of Fame of World Nongovernmental Organization Leaders and the Cranbrook Peace Award. The N.Y. Review of Books said, "William Schulz… has done more than anyone in the American human rights movement to make human rights issues known in the United States."

An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Schulz joined Amnesty after serving 15 years with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, the last eight as president. From 1985-93, he also served on the Council of the International Association for Religious Freedom, the oldest international interfaith organization in the world.

Currently, Schulz is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., where he works in the area of religion and public policy and oversees a project designed to provide a blueprint for human rights policy for the next U.S. administration.

Schulz holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago as well as a master's in theology and a Doctor of Ministry from Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago. He is the author of several books, including "In Our Own Best Interests: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All" and "Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights."

The event is sponsored by UNC Asheville's chapter of Amnesty International, UNC Asheville's Political Science Department and the American Civil Liberties Union of Western North Carolina.

For more information, call UNC Asheville's Political Science Department at 828/251-6634.