Distinguished Lecturers
Sarah B. Snyder

In this lecture, Snyder examines how 1960s-era social movements and experiences abroad spurred Americans to become active on human rights violations in the Soviet Union, Greece, South Korea, Southern Rhodesia, and Chile. Their efforts fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy, and we live with the legacies of their activism today.

The lecture shows the policy implications for the end of the Cold War by analyzing ways in which recalcitrant states can be persuaded to change. It suggests international shaming can be effective-wish-full member of international community. It explores how activists can maintain momentum despite changes in political leadership. It demonstrates that human contacts are a means to bridging political, ideological, military, and economic divides. It also highlights how an issue can gain salience through personalization as Western human rights activists and politicians made the plight of Eastern European dissidents more immediate to a wider public. Snyder answers the question, how did the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, which was a voluntary agreement quickly dismissed by many international participants and commentators, come to play such an influential role in the end of the Cold War? She shows how several structural aspects of the document led to its surprising strength, and a number of developments in the years that followed fostered a process that offered opportunities to use the Helsinki Final Act to realize change in Europe.

This lecture will show that the traditional distinction between official and unofficial diplomats misses the complex roles that American expatriates play in their host communities. It explores the ways Americans living abroad enhance, muddle, and damage the United States’ relations with foreign governments and their peoples. Private Americans living abroad influence U.S. foreign relations in myriad ways, including serving as informal diplomats to foreign communities, serving as resources for U.S. officials, and even precipitating diplomatic crises. American expatriates can enhance American “soft power” in a country, particularly by offering access to advanced medical care, specialized training, and English-language lessons. When they are kidnapped, murdered, or arrested, however, these Americans can shape U.S. foreign policy in unexpected and potentially damaging ways. Snyder will describe the broad history of Americans living overseas through deep research that reveals the distinctiveness of individuals’ experiences and their significance for U.S. foreign policy.

During his campaign for president, Joe Biden declared a commitment to put “human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.” This lecture explores the history of that commitment and the degree to which Biden's presidency is living up to that promise. Throughout its history, the U.S. government has been largely consistent in minimizing attention to human rights concerns in its policy formulation. Yet the rhetoric and policies of the Biden administration suggest it is adopting a new approach.

Throughout its history, the U.S. government has been largely consistent in minimizing attention to human rights concerns in its policy formulation. The two exceptions to this low level interest have come when championing human rights aligned with the government’s existing foreign priorities or when nongovernmental activists successfully pressured branches of the U.S. government to take human rights violations into greater account. The talk analyzes six distinct periods of U.S. attention to human rights since 1945 and reveals the means by which activists can shape government policy.