Christian Human Rights

Author Meets Critics debate

CEMES is proud to announce that Professor Samuel Moyn (Yale University) will give a lecture on his book Christian Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

Prof. Moyn is among the world’s leading scholars in his field, and Prof. Moyn holds a doctorate in modern European history from the University of California-Berkeley in 2000 and a law degree from Harvard University in 2001.

He has written several books in the fields of European intellectual history and human rights history, including The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Prof. Moyn will present his seminal book, followed by comments by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen (Research Director, Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law/adjunct Professor of Law at Aarhus University) and Tine Ravnsted-Larsen Reeh (Professor, University of Copenhagen)​, and a Q&A session.

The lecture is open to all and will be followed by a reception (16:00-17:00)

In Christian Human Rights, Samuel Moyn asserts that the rise of human rights after World War II was prefigured and inspired by a defence of the dignity of the human person that first arose in Christian churches and religious thought in the years just prior to the outbreak of the war. The Roman Catholic Church and transatlantic Protestant circles dominated the public discussion of the new principles in what became the last European golden age for the Christian faith. At the same time, West European governments after World War II, particularly in the ascendant Christian Democratic parties, became more tolerant of public expressions of religious piety. Human rights rose to public prominence in the space opened up by these dual developments of the early Cold War.

The event is part of the Author meets Critics series and is organized by Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES).