“What Exactly Are Human Rights?” with Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen will explore the strange fact that human rights, though constantly appealed to as a moral standard, are not well understood.  He will ask:  what are human rights?  Are they relevant to us, and why?  He is Professor of Economics and of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University, the former Master of Trinity College,Cambridge, and the author of many books. He is also prominently involved in higher education in his native India. His work on ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, and poverty has won almost countless honors, including a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998.

Amartya Kumar Sen, CH (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian philosopher and economist who was awarded the 1998Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members. Sen is best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food.He helped to create the United Nations Human Development Index. In 2012, he became the first non-U.S. citizen recipient of the National Humanities Medal.

He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxfordand a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from 1998 to 2004. Sen is a member of the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the not-for-profit behind the Health Impact Fund. He is the first Indian and the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college. He also serves as the first Chancellor of the proposed Nalanda International University.

Sen’s books have been translated into more than thirty languages over a period of forty years. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, Time magazine listed him under “60 years of Asian Heroes” and in 2010 included him in their “100 most influential persons in the world”. New Statesman listed him in their 2010 edition of “World’s 50 Most Influential People Who Matter”. Sen was one of the 20 Nobel Laureates who signed the “Stockholm Memorandum” at the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden on 18 May 2011. Sen is also the Jury Chair for the Infosys Prize 2013 for the discipline of Humanities.

Related Links

Prof. Sen’s Wikipedia Page