5 Assignment 01

My name is Mariela Eduardo. This is my second Semester is CWE. My major is Early Childhood with co concentration with History politics and law. I am currently work fulltime as Director of First Bloom Day Care. I have great passion for my profession and have many plans to expansion. I believe with education, determination and hard work anything is possible. I a world run by masculinity a woman in power has many barriers to overcome and by getting the proper education and hard work she will be able to climb the escalator of success. My parents come from Dominican Republic, my mother is an accountant and my father barely reached 5th grade due to economic reason. Upon travel to US, my mother could no longer pursue her career as an accountant and had to settle for Home attendant and my father became a chef. They showed me that hard work and determination is the key to success and with education I will have more opportunity to succeed. In taking this class I hope to get a deeper understanding of Woman Right as Human Right to which will help me in my career and help other woman progress in life.

In the introduction of her book, Inventing Human Rights by Lynn Hunt (2007) she draws attention to works that were prosecutors to the Universal Declaration for Human Rights which were adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Thomas Jefferson made evident natural human rights in an official document creating an enigma and The French revolution Declaration of the rights of man and citizen states that all men are born with equal rights.

The Declaration of the rights of man and citizen drafted in 1789, states all men are born with equal rights, declaring no priest, king or noble is better than any other man. Also in The Declaration of independence in 1776 when first drafted by Thomas Jefferson went sentence restructures by interchanging “sacred and undeniable” with “self-evident”. This word is controversial to Mrs. Hunt because something so evident as human rights should not have to be part of a document. In current time, we face the problem that all men are born equal no matter sex, religion, cultural background and immigration status. We should not be separated or questioned of our basic human rights of peace and equality.

I, Ethel Reed, am an African American Women who works overnight in the Emergency Room.  I supervisor over 10 workers and I enjoy working.  I started out working in the hospital as a clerical worker. Thereafter I moved to their Admitting Department doing Death Certificates and Birth Registry. Then I moved up to supervisor Bed Board the nucleus of the Hospital System. My husband and my son are my gifts from God. I am particularly proud of my son who just graduated with his Bachelors of Science in Accounting. I am a senior at City College Center of Worker Education and its difficulty to leave. I love CWE.  Women’s Rights as Human Rights I believe are intriguing facts about Women: I will learn much about myself.  Other than learning my family history and Black history, Women’s history is another way to learn about me.  I believe in Human Rights for all individuals however I recognize Women rights at my job are disproportionately unfair.  I could have never imagined how I was drawn into the perceptions assigned to women. And I never challenged the stereotypes I confronted. I am looking forward to learning in this class.

Introduction:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident”

The Declaration of Independence was written with the universal assumption that White Elite men were the only human beings entitled to equal rights, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And universally this was displayed in their attitudes and behavior. The United States Aristocratic men fought Great Britain to become an independent country, autonomy. Thomas Jefferson had written a declaration which failed to give a voice or representation to Women, Blacks, and poor White men. Although the Declaration was continuously revised to provide a better understanding of a Human Being’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the Framers of this declaration were from a particular class and gender. They were unable to understand any grievance from Blacks, Women and poor White men. Of course, Aristocratic White men were unable to have a discussion about why Blacks were unable to obtain Equal Rights during their Life, and unable to obtain Liberty and unable to obtain the Pursuit of Happiness. A conversation about Blacks inclusive in the Declaration of Independence was to threatening. During the time when the doctrine was written: unlimited power was given to Whites and most Blacks were enslaved or tortured.  So how could White men who owned slaves have any concern about their autonomy? They were unable to discuss the complicated issues of Blacks subordination. Thomas Jefferson and the Framers who helped with the revision of the declaration overtly acknowledged that Aristocratic White men received a better way of life. They owned property (Black human beings) and at the same time they declared, “All Human Beings are Equal. Autonomy did not include Blacks. A racial caste system existed. In the same way, Women traveled painful paths of discrimination. Women were automatically   assigned to domestic work they were not viewed as fellow citizens. Women were unable to escape the crucial role they played in the household.  This sexual caste system was in direct opposition to the written doctrine that; All Human Beings were Created Equal with Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. In a similar situation, White men who visibly looked the same without any property were not accepted. The constraints and limitations forced upon Blacks, Women and poor White men dictated their fate in many ways.

Still today, an institutionalized non written system has been drawn into some work places. An urgency to promote men prior to women occurs often. In some cases, women are paid considerably less than Men, although they may perform the same job. Notions about women during child bearing years may or may not dictate when she is promoted. Then in other situations, often men are only hired as a firefighter. Mostly men are hired to work within the Con Edison manholes. Women are hired to work within the office. Discrimination happens within the work place on multiple levels.  The constraints and limitations are parallel to many biases in the past.

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Hello everyone! My name is Tyesha Marius and I’m a psychology major. My goal Is to become a school psychologist in a special needs school. I’m interested in learning about women’s rights and issues because I would like to become more aware of issues that concern me. The rights of women are an ever changing thing and I would like to learn more about the changes. I’m particularly not a fan of these changes being dominated by males, but that’s another story.

In the introduction to Lynn Hunt’s “Inventing Human Rights”, Hunt highlights some key documents in history that were used in formulating the human rights we have today. She begins with the Declaration of Independence and how its inclusions of human rights seemingly didn’t apply to all humans. It left out slaves, people without property, some religious minorities, freed blacks, and women. I liked the fact that she said “human rights required three interlocking qualities” (p.20): it must be universal, equal and natural. She continues to say human rights are only valid in a political setting or a society. Which I would have to agree with.

​Next, she discussed what “ human rights” meant to the French and English in the 18th century, before the Declaration of Independence. I seemed to have too general a use. They were trying to figure out what this phrase would mean outside of political use. To some French Catholic priests this meant running around naked, being in touch with nature as close as possible. Various terms such as “rights of man”, “rights of humanity” and “natural rights” seemingly floated around in plays by Rousseau and other intelligent works. ​

​Then, she continues to discuss how human rights became self evident in the eighteenth century. A contemporary moral philosopher has shed some light on self evidence. He claimed that normal people are able to able to equally self-govern. But, in that era, not many were considered to have the capacity to self-govern. Children, servants, slaves, the insane, the property-less and actually women lacked the independence to be deemed morally autonomous. Women were only identifiable by their fathers or husbands.

​Furthermore she brings forth the work of political scientist Benedict Anderson, who thinks that there is a “imagined empathy” (pg.32) that is the foundation of human rights over nationalism. Emerging experiences and awareness of self at that time were changing the basis of what was to be the rights of man.

Hello!! My name is Jessica Doiley. I’m 22 years old and I am a teacher for a two-year-old classroom at a daycare in the Bronx. I enjoy reading books and learning new things. As a female I feel that I shouldn’t be told what to do with my body, nor should I be told what to do in general. I’ve recently been a part of the women’s march with my sister and there were a lot of other women who believe the same things as I do. In this class I hope to learn things beyond what I already knew. I want to be engrossed in whatever I read in class. I feel that with whatever is going on in the government, this class will be important to be a part of.

From what I got out of the reading was that those who declared rights didn’t really declare rights for everyone. Individuals such as children, those who are mentally disabled, foreigners, and those who didn’t have property were excluded also. Slaves and freed black people were excluded from having individual rights, women and those who are a part of a certain religious group were excluded. Women are always excluded from things when it comes to the government. How this is similar to modern day human rights is that our new president Donald Trump not only belittles women, but is trying to ban some of our human rights. Not just women’s rights but everyone’s rights. He’s banned Muslims from traveling, and he also wants to send immigrants (children and adults) back to their country. He also wants to take money from the Mexicans to build a wall around Mexico. He’s even spoken about invading Mexico. I agree with what the author says about human rights and how they require three interlocking qualities which are 1. Rights must be natural 2. Rights must be equal and 3. Rights must be universal. “For rights to be human rights, all humans everywhere in the world must possess them equally them equally and only because of their status as human beings.” I feel that the quote was self-explanatory and I agree with it. Yes, in order for someone to have human rights it must be universal, it must be equal, and it must be natural meaning that in my opinion, rights belong to everyone from the rich all the way down to the poor. If someone of the higher power is going to say that everyone is equal ten it must be proven and it must be for EVERYONE.

My name is Maria D’Amelio and this will be my second to last semester at CWE. I am grateful for the variety of classes and the dedication of the professors and students, here but I am also very much looking forward to graduating. I was delighted to learn about this class as I have been an activist around various issues – including women’s rights – for over a decade and am always interested to read and learn more about political and theoretical debates so that I can be as informed as possible. Currently, I’m involved in a group to defend women’s reproductive rights, which is something that has been steadily eroded ever since the right to safe, legal abortion was won in 1973. Women’s issues have always been a centerpiece for me in terms of my involvement and my study. I believe very strongly that we need to learn the lessons of the past and build a grassroots movement that takes into account and fights around the issues that affect all races, gender expression, religions, and economic statuses. I actually still have a lot of hope that this is possible. I’m hoping that this class will help me to learn more about issues that are deeply important to me.
The language in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 – one of the precursors to the Universal Declaration for Human Rights of 1948 that Lynn Hunt discusses in Inventing Human Rights (2007) – is so familiar to so many by now, that it is almost taken for granted. But, the questions raised by Hunt, in particular whether or not something that is supposedly “self-evident” needs to be explained, force a critical examination as to what the actual drafters of the document meant. The irony of a well-known slaveowner penning lines about the equality of all human beings may still be lost on some, but is an act that is nonetheless difficult to defend. It seems rather obvious today, that Jefferson’s vision of “man” was a supremely narrow one. Certainly, as Hunt points out, the word “man” as a term was a stand-in for “people,” though, even this is cause for pause. Jefferson did not intend for women to be part of the category of “all men,” nor did he intend for men of a darker hue to join in the celebration of the equality of “all men.” He spoke to a specific demographic: his own. Those who owned property (slaves were the most profitable form of property in Jefferson’s day), those who were male, and, of course, white. This version of equality or notion of human rights does not jibe with the standard – or the perceived standard – that exists today. What’s interesting, however, is how, even today, human beings are quickly demoted from that category under a variety of circumstances. Hunt points to a few in her essay, including immigrants, but it’s worth talking about prisoners, as well.

Hello everyone. My name is Maria Canela Basilio. Yes, I have both of my parent’s last names. As my mother would say “I birthed you so its only right I get my last name in there as well.” Well my mothers’ strong, independent way of thinking is what has led me to CWE. I am on my final semester of my undergraduate career. My major in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Social Welfare. This was stood out to me because I feel that I need to be more educated in order to be the best feminist that I’m capable of being. During the Woman’s March I saw a sign that read something like “Women rights are human rights.” This sign just proved to me that me taking this course was needed. I’m very interested in becoming more educated and aware of all the struggles that women all around are facing. As we all know, women in the US aren’t being looked at as equal of value as men are according to the new elected President Trump. I hope to gain knowledge and confidence as the semester progresses. I hope to enjoy and feel empowered by this course.

“Founding Fathers,” but what did they really find. The Declaration of Independence, according to Lynn Hunt (2007) didn’t give much independence or human rights to anyone that wasn’t a rich white male. This is similar to the way in which politics are being viewed in today date. This document served as a starting point to proclaim that humans needed to have basic rights. However, the people considered human enough to be granted these rights fell into a very slim group. Jefferson was one of these Founding Fathers, what’s controversial is that him himself was a slave owner. Whether he gave them “better treatment” or not is still going against what he was stating in the Declaration of Independence. Even though, we have come a very long way there is still a lot of gray areas. The United Nations adopted these articles as the International Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. However, there are still restrictions, rights are limited depending on where you fall in the pyramid of society, class, and socioeconomic status and religion. In todays day protests are happening often. Social media is one of the most powerful ways in which injustices are being shouted upon. As individuals it is our duty to call out when one’s basic human rights are being taken advantage of, when a human isn’t being treated equally because of where they come from, because of whom they belief in.

1. Introduction

Hi All. My name is Gabrielle and as I mentioned in class I have been a student at CWE since the fall of 2013. My career as the VP of eCommerce at a fashion accessories company keeps me fairly busy, so I am slowly chipping away, taking one or two classes every semester. I am happy to say the end is finally in sight! I expect to graduate either end of Fall ’17 or Spring ’18. My concentration is The Americas and within the context of the Americas I have been working towards focusing on human rights. Some past courses include the Human Rights Forum, History of Human Rights, and International Conflict. I am also hoping to focus in some way on human rights once I move on to graduate school. All of which is why I chose this class. And of course, it now seems to be more timely as ever. I am looking forward to learning alongside all of you.

2. The Evolving Notion of Rights and The Role of Education and The Arts

According to Hunt, two key documents laid the foundation for the Universal Declaration for Human Rights: The Declaration of Independence and The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen. While both both can be used in context to the conversation around human rights today, I will be focusing on the Declaration of Independence for the following two reasons. Firstly, Hunt’s overall thesis which states that education and the arts fostered an environment of empathy which in turn helped to lead to the invention of human rights (p. 32), lastly, the idea of who should be included under the umbrella of self-evident rights is ever evolving and eventually shifted from particularistic to universal (p. 117).

Hunt’s thesis that education and the arts fostered an environment which lead to the Declaration of Independence including the notion of rights is particularly interesting given that we are currently in an environment in which both education and the arts are under attack. Those that are educated are considered ‘elitist’, the proposed Education Secretary possess a palatable disdain for public education, and the current proposed federal budget cuts funding for the arts and humanities completely. Given Hunt’s argument that education and the arts leads to an environment in which empathy is fostered and rights are recognized, one must wonder if the attacks on education and the arts we see today is a purposeful attempt to divide the populace in such a way that the concept of rights for all is no longer supported. In an effort to balance the somewhat fatalistic with the hopeful, I turn to the second reason for focusing on the Declaration of Independence, the evolving concept of rights as universal.

When the Declaration of Independence was written, the concept of rights was far from universal. At the time, rights applied to white, property owning men. Eventually, propertyless white men, black men, and women were included. In our own lifetime we have seen rights advance even further to include the gay and lesbian community and conversations around the rights of the transgender community. This must continue to give us hope. While again, movement is slow and may appear to currently be moving backwards, it is important for us to remember how far we have progressed and continue to push society forward. Rights are rarely, if ever, given, they are fought for. Today, we need to fight not only for the further advancement of human rights but to also keep the rights which those who came before us fought so hard for.

Hi class, I’m Destiny Rivera and this is my first semester at CWE, Introducing and describing myself has always been a semi-challenging task for me, which is somewhat ridiculous considering that I should know myself better than anyone else. It’s a pensive question. It’s a question that makes you weigh your personal pros and cons. It’s a debate between deciding whether the answer should be of academic or of personal relevance, whether it’s interesting enough to share or whether some things are better left unsaid. Maybe this is just my perspective on the task because I am indeed a contemplative person. My thoughtful nature contributes to my interest in this class. I want to be educated on why human rights, a topic that is seemingly self-explanatory, is a topic of controversy, of debate.

The label “Founding Father” often refers to someone who contributed to a movement, someone almost revolutionary. Thomas Jefferson is widely known as a Founding Father by the United States of America, considering that he was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence, a document that emphasized that all men were created equal, contributed to the development of the idea that Man is entitled to these non-negotiable rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. According to Lynn Hunt (2007), these ideals and who they actually applied to were not explained enough. This document, a piece that served as a forerunner to the Universal Declaration for Human Rights adopted by the United Nations, is a work of controversy. Though there are a great quantity who idolize Jefferson, appreciative of his seemingly well-intentioned print, there are people who speak volumes against his credibility. The author, Jefferson, did not have enough credibility to make his belief of equality evident through his own reality, considering that he was a slave owner himself.

Jefferson’s hypocrisy, along with others men throughout history who have had the privilege to speak publicly, only adds disbelief to the idea that the rights of man, or human rights, should be evident and obvious. Several years later, after the Declaration of Independence had been published, a committee of forty deputies came up with articles that emphasized not only the rights of man, but of human rights before the law. In 1948, the United Nations adopted these articles as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today, human rights can still be argued as clouded by restrictions, whether rights are limited to someone due to their religious practices,  age, disability, and so on. With the recent and popular use of social media, our present generation can view uproars of inhumane acts globally, discrimination in almost every social setting, and injustices under the law.

The United States is guilty, much like many other parts of the world, of turning a blind eye to those in need: the impoverished, the addicts, the old, the young, minorities, immigrants, etc. We’re living in a world where Muslims cannot even converse in their own Arabic or foreign languages without striking fear into the lives of those who are not educated in that language, to those who are prejudice, and to those who are ignorant. We’re living in a world where protests are constantly happening to ensure that everyone is aware that all lives matter, an idea that Jefferson would have ensured was self-evident. Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Kendra James. These are the names of people, humans born with human rights, who may never know justice before the law. It seems to me that our Universal Declaration of Human Rights may have more than a few loopholes, where there is confusion between an ideal world and unattainable ideas.

Hello! I’m Allison Fabian, and this is my first semester at CWE. I am returning to school after a few years off to help me move forward in my career. I chose to take “Women’s Rights as Human Rights” for several reasons. I’ve always been interested in human rights and feel strongly that equal human rights are essential to the society I would like to live in. Particularly in the current political climate it’s important to know not just contemporary human right’s issues, but to be able to give them historical context. Yes, I am looking to improve my talking points, but also to educate myself, so I can act in ways that align with my thinking. I am especially concerned with women’s rights. I am a proud intersectional feminist, and my first Women’s Studies class opened my eyes to the injustices women face, from the obvious to the subtle. I’m excited to learn from the differing perspectives in the class.

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The standout document in the Introduction to Inventing Human Rights by Lynn Hunt is the US Declaration of Independence, and Hunt uses it as an anchor to offer an interesting study of the evolution of philosophies of human rights. Philosophies that were, at the time of the Enlightenment, spreading, with the US Declaration held as the standard. However, what really struck me was the importance of the language involved, and the ways that that language has changed. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence of the unalienable rights of men, but used the phrase “natural rights” in his writings until adapting to the term “rights of man” in the late 1780s. The French had been using “rights of man” since the 1760s but the phrase “rights of man” wasn’t defined until 1789, when the marquis de Condorcet described them in his essay “On the Influence of the American Revolution on Europe”. Contemporarily, if any group was to write a manifesto it would absurd for them not to define their terms. Despite the perceived objectivity of a dictionary, words have subjective meanings and uses, that change and are redefined by those who use them.

The Declaration of Independence (and the writings that were inspired by it) described these unalienable rights of men as “self-evident”. The term strikes me as a bit egotistical- though there are other, more optimistic, ways to interpret the concept. For a group of wealthy, property-owning, white males to declare their rights to be “self-evident” is to say they all had an equal estimation of their inherent value and of the treatment they deserved. The lack of other voices in that conversation implies that these self-evident rights that Jefferson (followed by many others) wrote about, applied only to that privileged class.

The paradox of the self-evidence of rights is brought into the modern era with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which abandons “rights of man” for “human rights”. The key issue that the language is changing to address is the universality of the defined rights. Logically, human rights would apply to all humans, thus being self-evident. How can something self-evident require discussion, and not be applied unilaterally? However, then as now, these rights are not universal, and therefore not self-evident as the “Whereas” that begins the UN Declaration implies they are. Hunt tackles this conflict in thinking by linking the concept of the self-evident rights of man with moral autonomy, citing the work of J. B. Schneewind. Moral autonomy requires not only the capacity to reason, but also the independence to think and act freely. The groups excluded from the self-evident rights of man by Enlightenment philosophers, groups like women, children, slaves, those without property, and so on, were excluded based on the philosophers’ belief that those groups lacked the competence for moral autonomy. This is the same logic, in different language, that is used to further disenfranchise already marginalized groups today, and what the UN is attempting to combat by updating to “human rights”. For a document like the UN Declaration to be fully inclusive, and for terms denoting the self-evidence of rights to be accurate, there needs to be a universal consensus that absolutely all humans are entitled, without question, to the rights laid out within the document. I believe, as Hunt also concludes, that the antidote to the prejudiced logic that complicates the universality of rights, is empathy, learned through experience and interaction.

Hello, my name is Delia Rosero. This is my third semester in CWE and my major is Liberal arts with a concentration in Disability studies. I have a part-time job working with a lovely lady who is in a wheelchair. I have a beautiful son, he is 6 years old and he has autism. I really like to spend time with him, playing or working in areas he needs a lot.  He is doing better and better even though doctors told me a few years ago that he would never talk, now he has some words to communicate. When I understood that his condition was something that could happen anyone and this did not him make different I started to love the way he is. At the beginning, I was comparing him to the rest of the kids but now I know he is unique and he is my son.

I decided to take this class because my adviser recommended me but I also was reading the description of the class before I took the decision and I really call my attention. I believe that having knowledge about rights as human beings it is very important. I was born in Ecuador and in my country even these days women are considered less that men and not have the same rights. This is something that I hope one day will change.

According to the Introduction by Lynn Hunt (2007), the Declaration Of Independence said that “ “all men are created equal”. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.“(Pg,15) . Even though there were some changes the final Declaration of Independence was supposed to include all people without distinction.

While I was reading this Introduction I can not believe how  “Bill of Rights “ did not recognize of people because some of them were still not considered to be part of the Human rights. Lynn describes how children, people with no property, slaves, some black people, women and some religions were not considered capable of participating in a political process. I can not understand how they were talking about “equality of rights” when they were leaving aside several people who were part of society and have the same rights as the rest of people.

There was also “The Paradox of Self-Evidence”  where Jefferson wrote, “ We hold these truths to be self-evident.” This part of the book mentions how all human rights were not self -evident when not all people were part of those rights. As the author of the book mentions “how can human rights be universal if they are not universally recognized?” (pg.20, 21).  I believe this is happening every day with women, people with disability, black people and people who have a different sexual orientation. Every day we see news about how immigrants have to work more hours and get less money or just how people don’t have the same rights as other.There are million of people who are exposed to human rights abuses every day.