COMMUNITY, DIVERSITY, AND RIGHTS The Annual Robert J. Giuffra ’82 Conference

Tuesday, May 12 – Wednesday, May 13, 2020 Princeton University

A public conference presented by The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University Cosponsored by The Association for the Study of Free Institutions, Texas Tech University

How are we to understand the relationships among community, diversity, and rights in the modern free society?

Most citizens are united in regarding community, diversity, and rights as good things. A decent and just society, we think, will respect rights, permit or even foster diversity, and provide opportunities for community, or for citizens to unite in pursuit of a common good. Nevertheless, deeper reflection suggests that these goods may be in tension with each other, that the pursuit of one may not always advance the others. We seek a community that permits diversity, but at some point community demands commonality and therefore must set a limit to diversity. The free society is a community based on respect for individual rights, but rights may not be a sufficient basis for community in the full sense and may even undermine community by elevating the claims of the individual over those of the common good. And an important stream of thought views rights as obtaining and protecting essential human goods, including inherently social goods.

Respect for rights is thought to foster diversity by permitting a variety of ways of life, but it is possible for an imperious understanding of rights to undermine diversity by demanding that all citizens and groups adhere to the same standards of belief and conduct. In the international sphere, we insist on universal human rights while, at the same time, treasuring the diversity of cultures. Yet some of these cultures do not recognize universal human rights and inducing or forcing them into compliance with universal human rights may therefore diminish the diversity of cultures.

Seeking to address these important issues, the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and the Association for the Study of Free Institutions are pleased to announce a conference in honor of Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University, entitled “Community, Diversity, and Rights.” The conference aims to recognize Professor Glendon’s many important scholarly and professional contributions and explore the relationship of her thought to the conference themes. The program includes scholars from a variety of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

We seek to address a number of questions. Is the right to religious freedom the first of our rights, the foundation of any free and just society? Is, as some critics of religious freedom advocacy contend, religious freedom merely a cover for bigotry and intolerance, and thus a threat to the rights of the non-religious? Does the growing tendency to frame our political debates in terms of rights claims help to ensure the freedom of all citizens, or does it impoverish our public discourse and cloud our thinking about the common good? Does religious diversity and respect for religious freedom permit religion to flourish, or does it foster a spirit of indifference that causes faith to wither? How has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights influenced contemporary thinking about rights, community, and diversity? What can Catholic social thought contribute to our understanding of community and rights? Is it possible today to find a philosophically compelling justification for human rights as natural? Universal? Unalienable?

TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2020

10:30 a.m. to Noon Presentation of the 2020 James Q. Wilson Award for Distinguished Scholarship on the Nature of a Free Society to Mary Ann Glendon

Presenter: Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University, on behalf of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions

Keynote: Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University

1:30 to 3:15 p.m. Revisiting Three Books by Mary Ann Glendon

Panelists: Yuval Levin, Resident Scholar and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies, American Enterprise Institute, on The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt (2011) James R. Stoner, Jr., Hermann Moyse, Jr., Professor and Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute, Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University on A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (2001) George Weigel, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center on Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991) Respondent: Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University Chair: Theresa M. Smart, Assistant Professor of Political Theory, School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University

2 3:45 to 5:30 p.m. Catholic Social Thought, Community, and the Idea of Rights

Panelists: Erika Bachiochi, Fellow, Ethics & Public Policy Center Carson Holloway, Ralph Wardle Diamond Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska Omaha Adrian Vermeule, Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law, Harvard Law School Chair: Bronwen C. McShea, Associate Research Scholar, James Madison Program, Princeton University

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2020

9:00 to 10:45 a.m. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Its Origin, Significance, and Consequences

Panelists: Robert A. Destro, Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State; Professor of Law (on leave), The Catholic University of America Seth D. Kaplan, Professorial Lecturer, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University Peter C. Myers, Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Chair: Paolo G. Carozza, Professor of Law; Director, Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame

11:15 to 1:00 p.m. Religious Diversity, Religious Truth, and Religious Freedom

Panelists: Habib C. Malik, Associate Professor of History, Department of Humanities, Lebanese American University Daniel Philpott, Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame Meir Y. Soloveichik *10, Rabbi, Congregation Shearith Israel; Director, Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University Imam Sohaib N. Sultan, Muslim Life Coordinator and Chaplain, Princeton University Chair: Daniel Mark, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Villanova University

2:30 to 4:30 p.m. Human Rights: Universal? Unalienable? Natural?

3 Panelists: Hadley Arkes, Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence Emeritus, Amherst College Patrick J. Deneen, Professor of Political Science, David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair, University of Notre Dame Sherif Girgis ‘08, Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy, Princeton University Philip Hamburger, Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law, Columbia University Chair: Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence; Director, James Madison Program, Princeton University

4:45 to 6:00 p.m. Nationalism and the Free Society A Conversation Sponsored by the Association for the Study of Free Institutions

Panelists: To Be Announced

Chair: Stephen H. Balch, Chairman, Association for the Study of Free Institutions; Director, Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Texas Tech University

The 2020 Robert J. Giuffra ’82 Conference is dedicated to the memory of esteemed members of the James Madison Society:

Sir Roger Scruton February 27, 1944 – January 12, 2020

Michael M. Uhlmann December 29, 1939 – October 8, 2019

QUESTIONS MAY BE DIRECTED TO:

Evelyn “Evy” Behling, Events Coordinator, James Madison Program [email protected] 609-258-1122 / 815-298-4335

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