UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The technologically-determined and career-focused private university where I teach has state of the arts programs in photography, computer science, new media, and many permutations of engineering, but no undergraduate or graduate degrees in English or history. At first glance, their response (invariably from highly technical, white, suburban males) highlights the distance between those protesting in anti-capitalist globalization demonstrations and those programming the security systems that sustain the Patriot Act, the prison system, as well as the more mundane slow passage through any airport. At first, few recognize it as a heuristic for centering human actuality, for examining issues of contemporary slavery, international labor conditions, rights of women and children, and the economic impact of undemocratic capitalist globalization--until they start to apply it to their own lives and fears.