Although it was not the original intent of the document, the Atlantic Charter of 1941 began a push that would eventually lead to many of our current international human rights institutions, said U History professor Elizabeth Borgwardt.
Borgwardt took a crowd of 150 U students, administrators and members of the Salt Lake community on an intellectual tour of early 1940s transformations in human rights ideas on Tuesday evening at Sam Weller’s bookstore downtown.
Borgwardt’s presentation, which launched a new lecture series on international human rights, focused largely on U.S. and British leaders Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. She followed them through the earliest days of a worldwide move toward developing human rights ideas as a way of rallying Allied morale and articulating a clear and persuasive anti-Axis ideology.
The Atlantic Charter was composed of fewer than 400 words and encompassed three main ideas: Wilsonian ideas about self-determination, the development of multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, and New Deal ideas about the “development of the human personality,” including a postwar world where “all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.”
Her award-winning book explains how this movement inaugurated many of the ideas and institutions that constitute our modern international human rights regime.
Following the charter, a series of controversies erupted over to whom the charter should apply, with such figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela reacting to the documents high-flown rhetoric with skepticism in the case of Gandhi, or enthusiasm, in the case of Mandela. Colonized peoples throughout the world soon began asking if the document should apply to the Pacific and other segments of the world as well.
She contrasted Mandela’s vision for the Atlantic Charter-seeing it as a worldwide proclamation of the equal dignity of all people-with Churchill’s much more constricted vision. She added that the term “human rights” was not a part of the original charter and was added to a later internationalization of it after the United States entered World War II on the side of the Allies in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Globalizing the ideas in the Atlantic Charter and applying them through new international institutions then became an explicit Allied war aim.
“This moment saw the synthesis of four key ideas that continue to inform our modern idea of human rights,” Borgwardt said. “Starting with traditional political rights as core values, plus an expansion of New Deal-style social and economic rights, combined with a new standing for the individual in
international law-and applying on an equal basis worldwide. This new synthesis internationalized New Deal ideas about individual security and in the process transformed ideas about national security.”
The talk was sponsored by U alumni Sandy and Anne Dolowitz. The U’s International Studies Program and College of Humanities organized Borgwardt’s lecture, which was followed by a book signing.
Many U students-at least a dozen of Borgwardt’s own-attended the lecture. Several said they were amazed by her discussion on the origins of human rights ideas and institutions.
“We do take some things for granted, like human rights, and we don’t really think where it all started from,” said first-year law student Aida Neimarlija.
“Her lecture reminded me of how the rhetoric can become so transformed; Bush changed the definition two years ago to gain support in Iraq, that’s not how Roosevelt and Churchill had meant it to be used,” said Jaimie Cogswell, a grad student in parks, recreation and tourism.
Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson helped introduce Borgwardt and accused the Bush administration of hypocrisy in touting rights through rhetoric and infringing on them through actions such as wire tapping.
Borgwardt recorded an interview with C-SPAN2/BookTV prior to the lecture, which will air at a later date.