From the refugee camps of Darfur to Louisiana’s death row, William Schulz has traveled the globe in pursuit of a world free from human rights violations. The former executive director of Amnesty International USA will discuss that elusive endeavor in delivering the main address at Ithaca College’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 20.
Schulz headed the American section of the world’s oldest and largest international human rights organization from 1994 to 2006. Independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion, Amnesty International undertakes research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination.
“It will be an honor and a privilege to have William Schulz address our graduating seniors and their guests,” said President Peggy R. Williams. “He has fought for social justice whenever and wherever he has found it imperiled, using the moral authority of his organization to shine a light on some of the planet’s darkest spots.”
Schulz is the author of the books In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All and Tainted Legacy: 9/11 and the Ruin of Human Rights. According to the New York Review of Books, he “has done more than anyone in the American human rights movement to make human rights issues known in the United States.”
“We’re thrilled to have a distinguished, thoughtful speaker like William Schulz deliver a final inspiring message to the Class of 2007,” said senior class president Alexander Moore. “His commitment to helping people from all walks of life epitomizes the spirit of the Ithaca College community. He is more than a high-profile success story; he represents the dynamic blend of academic inquiry, social responsibility and leadership capacity that we at IC strive to achieve.”
Though Bush administration policies such as the Patriot Act have been a frequent target, Schulz has also aimed some of his sharpest criticism at the American political left, which he claims must take on the terror threat or risk irrelevance. A vigorous defense of human and civil liberties, while essential to spreading democracy worldwide, is not enough to stop terrorists from blowing up airplanes or shopping malls, he says.
Schulz is currently a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., and a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. During his 12 years at Amnesty, he traveled to Liberia, Northern Ireland, Sudan and Cuba, among other trouble spots. He also traveled throughout the United States, spreading the human rights message from campuses to boardrooms to civic organizations. He has been a frequent guest on television programs such as 60 Minutes, the Today show and Nightline.
An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Schulz came to Amnesty after serving for eight years as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. He currently chairs the board of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and has served on the boards of People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the International Association for Religious Freedom. He has received a wide variety of honors, including the “humanist of the year” award from the American Humanist Association and being named to the Vanity Fair Hall of Fame of World Nongovernmental Organization Leaders.
(Posted on behalf of Dave Maley)
