Schedule of Events
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DEBATE:
"Should
We Sacrifice Liberty for Security?" Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International USA and Mr. Richard Lowry, Editor, National Review |
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PANEL
DISCUSSIONS 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. 3:45 to 5:00 p.m. |
Debaters
Dr. William F. Schulz
Dr.
William F. Schulz was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty
International (USA) in March, 1994.
An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he came to Amnesty after
serving for fifteen years with the Unitarian Universalist Association of
Congregations (UUA), the last eight (1985-93) as President of the Association.
As President of the UUA, Dr. Schulz was involved in a wide variety of international and social justice causes. He led the first visit by a U. S. Member of Congress to post-revolutionary Romania in January, 1991, two weeks after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. That delegation was instrumental in the subsequent improvement in the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in Romania.
Dr. Schulz spent February, 1992, in India in consultation with the Holdeen India Fund, a fund dedicated to ending communal violence and to the political and economic empowerment of women, bonded laborers and others. He led fact-finding missions to the Middle East and Northern Ireland and was instrumental in his denomination's opposition to U. S. military aid to El Salvador.
In 1997 he led an Amnesty mission to Liberia to investigate atrocities committed during the civil war there and returned to Northern Ireland with the human rights organization in 1999 to insist that human rights protections be incorporated into the peace process. During his years with Amnesty he has traveled extensively, both in the US and abroad.
From 1985-93 he served on the Council of the International Association for Religious Freedom, the oldest international interfaith organization in the world. Throughout his career he has been outspoken in his opposition to the death penalty and his support for women's rights, gay and lesbian rights and racial justice, having organized, participated in demonstrations and written extensively on behalf of all four causes.
Dr. Schulz has served on the boards of People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Communitarian Network and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, among others. He is currently a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and is Chair of the Board of Meadville/Lombard Theological School.
His new book, entitled In Our Own Best Interests: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All, makes the case to the American public that human rights ought to be worthy of support not just because they are morally compelling -- though the book tries to make that case as well -- but also because they are in our best interests from the point of view of national security, economic growth, environmental protection, public health, and the like.
He has appeared frequently on radio and television, including “60 Minutes,” “20/20,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” “All Things Considered,” “Talk of the Nation,” “ABC World News,” “Larry King Live,” “Politically Incorrect,” and on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX News and Blomberg News. He has published and is quoted widely in newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chirtian Science Monitor, the New York Review of Books, The Nation, The National Interest and Parade and is the author of several books, including Finding Timeand Other Delicacies and Transforming Wrds: Six Essays on Preaching.
A familiar speaker at colleges and universities, Dr. Schulz has delivered lectures at the Yale Political Union, Oxford University, McGill, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern and many others and taught a seminar on the role of religion in international social and political conflict at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government (Institute of Politics) in the fall of 1993. He is a frequent speaker at World Affairs Council meetings, before corporate groups and in international settings and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He has received the Harry S. Truman Award for International Leadership from the Kansas City, MO, United Nations Association and been honored by those from one end of the religious spectrum to another, having been named one of the “World’s 365 Most Influential People” by the The Pray 365 Project and chosen “Humanist of the Year” by the American Humanist Association in 2000.
Dr. Schulz is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College, holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago and the Doctor of Ministry degree from Meadville [pronounced “meed-vil”]/Lombard Theological School (at the University of Chicago). He was awarded an honorary D. D. from Meadville/Lombard in 1987 and an honorary L. H. D. from Nova Southwestern University in 1995. He is listed in the Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the East.
He is married to the Rev. Beth Graham, also a Unitarian Universalist minister, and they live on Long Island where Ms. Graham serves a congregation. Dr. Schulz has two grown children from a previous marriage.
Richard
Lowry graduated in 1990 from the University of Virginia, where he studied
English and history. While there, he edited a conservative monthly
magazine called the Virginia Advocate. He went on to work as a research
assistant for Charles Krauthammer, then as a reporter for a local paper in
Northern Virginia.