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(Formerly IPS 208A) This course will examine the arc of an atrocity. It begins with an introduction to the interdisciplinary scholarship on the causes and enablers of mass violence genocide, war crimes, terrorism, and state repression. It then considers political and legal responses ranging from humanitarian intervention (within and without the Responsibility to Protect framework), sanctions, commissions of inquiry, and accountability mechanisms, including criminal trials before international and domestic tribunals. The course will also explore the range of transitional justice mechanisms available to policymakers as societies emerge from periods of violence and repression, including truth commissions, illustrations, and amnesties. Coming full circle, the course will evaluate current efforts aimed at atrocity prevention, rather than response, including President Obama¿s atrocities prevention initiative. Readings address the philosophical underpinnings of justice, questions of institutional design, and the way in which different societies have balanced competing policy imperatives. Cross-listed with LAW 5033.

This course examines core human rights issues and concepts from a comparative and historical perspective. In the beginning part of the course we will focus on current debates about the universality of human rights norms, considering the foundation of the international human rights regime and claims that it is a product of western colonialism, imperialism, or hegemony. We will then discuss a series of issues where the debates about universality are particularly acute: gender inequality and discrimination, sexual violence, child marriage and forced marriage more generally, and other related topics. We will also consider the way in which issues of gender-based violence arise in the context of internal and international conflicts.

This community engaged learning workshop is open only to students who are concurrently enrolled in SPANLANG 108SL: Spanish Immersion and Asylum Law. Students who opt into HUMRTS 108 will have the opportunity to apply their advanced Spanish language skills and knowledge from the class as volunteers with the Dilley Bro Bono Project in Dilley, Texas for one week immediately following the academic term. Students will work directly with detained Spanish-speaking families seeking asylum to prepare them for the credible fear interview (CFI). The Dilley Pro Bono Project will train students to conduct CFI orientations for asylum-seekers and provide guidance on how to prepare them for their interview. This course requires an application process. Please email instructor Vivian Brates vbrates@stanford.edu to get a link to the appropriate web form. Students participating in the weekly meeting during the academic term but not traveling to Texas should enroll for one unit. Students traveling in addition to the academic term meetings should enroll for 3 units. Please note that this course must be taken for a minimum of 3 units and a letter grade to be eligible for Ways credit.

This seminar intends to follow the development of Existentialism from its genesis to its literary expressions in the European postwar. The notions of defining commitment, of moral ambiguity, the project of the self, and the critique of humanism will be studied in selected texts by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Unamuno, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Joan Sales.

This seminar considers the theory and practice of transitional justice as exemplified by diverse case studies, such as Germany, South Africa, Bosnia, and Rwanda. We will ask ourselves throughout the term whether and to what extent mass atrocities and grave human rights violations can be ameliorated and healed, and what legal, institutional, and political arrangements may be most conducive to such attempts. We will study war crimes tribunals and truth commissions, and we will ask about their effectiveness, especially in regards to their potential of fostering reconciliation in a given society. In every case we will encounter and evaluate specific shortcomings and obstacles, which will provide us with a more nuanced understanding of the complex process of coming to terms with the past.

This course explores the normative demands and definitions of justice that transcend the nation-state and its borders, through the lenses of political justice, economic justice, and human rights. What are our duties (if any) towards those who live in other countries? Should we be held morally responsible for their suffering? What if we have contributed to it? Should we be asked to remedy it? At what cost? These are some of the questions driving the course. Although rooted in political theory and philosophy, the course will examine contemporary problems that have been addressed by other scholarly disciplines, public debates, and popular media, such as immigration and open borders, climate change refugees, and the morality of global capitalism (from exploitative labor to blood diamonds). As such, readings will combine canonical pieces of political theory and philosophy with readings from other scholarly disciplines, newspaper articles, and popular media.

How STS and the Humanities can together help think out the looming catastrophes that put the future of humankind in jeopardy.

This course explores the values and questions posed in the formative period of East Asian civilizations. Notions of a Dao ("Way") are common to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, but those systems of thought have radically different ideas about what that Dao is and how it might be realized in society and an individual's life. These systems of thought appeared first in China, and eventually spread to Korea and Japan. Each culture developed its own ways of reconciling the competing systems, but in each case the comprehensive structure of values and human ideals differs significantly from those that appeared elsewhere in the ancient world. The course examines East Asian ideas about self-cultivation, harmonious society, rulership, and the relation between human and nature with a view toward expanding our understanding of these issues in human history, and highlighting their legacies in Asian civilizations today. The course features selective readings in classics of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts that present the foundational tenets of Asian thought. N. B. This is the first of three courses in the Humanities Core, East Asian track. These courses show how history and ideas shape our world and future. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to the life of the mind.

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.