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from the issue of February 12, 2004
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Former president of Ireland to lecture
UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Mary Robinson, the first woman president of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, will speak at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 17 as part of the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues lecture series.
The lecture, titled “Human Rights and Ethical Globalization,” is free and open to the public and occurs in the main auditorium of the Lied Center for Performing Arts. A pre-talk, led by David Forsythe, Charles J. Mach University Professor of Political Science at UNL, will begin at 3 p.m. in the Lied Center’s Steinhart Room.
Robinson has spent most of her life as a human rights activist. This semester, she joined the faculty at Columbia University, where she is a professor of practice in the Department of International and Public Affairs and teaches a course on human rights and globalization. She also will serve as an adviser to Columbia’s Earth Institute on international development issues and as a senior research scholar at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute.
Robinson also leads the Ethical Globalization Initiative, whose goal is to bring the standards of human rights into the globalization process and to support capacity building in good governance in developing countries, with an initial focus on Africa. Its priority issues for 2004 are fostering more equitable international trade and development, strengthening responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa, and shaping more humane migration policies.
Robinson was president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, elevating the Irish presidency from a largely ceremonial role to a powerful office for effecting change within Ireland and internationally. She is credited for greatly improving the situation of marginalized groups within her country as well as drawing attention to global crises and the needs of developing nations. During her tenure as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), Robinson was instrumental in integrating human rights concerns throughout all U.N. activities, personally visiting regions of civil conflict, including Sierra Leone, Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia, and focusing international attention on East Timor.
In October 2002, Robinson launched the Ethical Globalization Initiative to promote a more ethical and equitable globalization process through dialogue, research and concerted action.
Robinson has extensive experience in international law and global governance. At 25, she was appointed Reid Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at Trinity College, where she also was a lecturer in European community law. With her husband, Nicholas, Robinson founded the Irish Centre for European Law in 1988. A senator from 1969 to 1989, Robinson practiced law at the Irish bar and took leading cases to the Court of the European Communities in Luxembourg and the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. She has also served on the Dublin City Council, the International Commission of Jurists and the Advisory Committee of Interights, and was an expert on European Community and Irish parliamentary committees.
Robinson is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the American Philosophical Society. A founding member and now chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, she is honorary president of Oxfam International, chairs the Irish Chamber Orchestra and serves on many boards, including the Vaccine Fund.
Robinson received a masters of arts degree from Trinity College, Dublin, where she is now chancellor. She also holds a Barrister-at-Law degree from the King’s Inns, Dublin, and a Masters of Law degree from Harvard University.
The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues is a cooperative project of the Cooper Foundation, the Lied Center for Performing Arts and UNL. Robinson’s Thompson lecture is co-presented as the Lewis E. Harris Lecture on Public Policy and funded by a gift from SmithKline Beckman.
For 16 years the E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues has offered Nebraskans the opportunity to experience lectures presented by speakers whose work and ideas impact our changing world. Past speakers of the forum include former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Holocaust survivor and peace activist Elie Wiesel.
For more information on other E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues lectures, visit , , or .
Major funding for the Thompson Forum is provided by the Cooper Foundation, which was founded in 1934 by Joseph H. Cooper, a Russian immigrant who believed in the power of knowledge. The foundation’s areas of interest are education, human services, and the arts and humanities. The series is named in honor of the late E.N. Thompson, former chair of the foundation and originator of the Thompson Forum.
Lied Center programming is supported by Friends of Lied and grants from National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency; Heartland Arts Fund, jointly supported by Arts Midwest and Mid-America Arts Alliance; and Nebraska Arts Council. All events in the Lied Center are made possible entirely or in part by the Lied Performance Fund, which has been established in memory of Ernst F. Lied and his parents, Ernst M. and Ida K. Lied.
The lecture
The E.N. Thompson Forum on World Issues lecture by former president of Ireland Mary Robinson will begin at 3:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Thompson lectures are also broadcast live at , on Lincoln cable channel 21, UNL’s KRNU radio station at 90.3 FM and UNL campus TV.
GO TO: ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 12
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