CHAMPAIGN, Ill. William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International, will give a free public lecture Sept. 19 beginning at 7 p.m. at the Channing-Murray Foundation, 1209 W. Oregon St., Urbana.
The talk, co-sponsored by the foundation and the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, is titled “In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All.”
Schulz, a Unitarian minister and former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, has been involved in many international and social justice causes.
In 1991, he led the first visit by a member of Congress to post-revolutionary Romania after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. In 1992, Schulz traveled to 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 also has led fact-finding missions to the Middle East and Northern Ireland.
His most recent book, “In Our Own Best Interests: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All,” makes the case that human rights ought to be worthy of support not just because they are morally compelling but also because they are in the nations best interests from the point of view of national security, economic growth, and environmental protection and public health.
