Cal State Long Beach’s second annual President’s Forum on International Human Rights will take place later this week, focusing on helping students understand and react appropriately to the challenges that take place in the fight toward social advancement.
The forum will take place Wednesday through Friday, mainly at the University Student Union Ballrooms. CSULB President F. King Alexander and the Center for International Education chose this year’s theme, “Exploring Challenges to Free Expression and Belief,” to help students fully recognize and appreciate their right to the freedom of speech.
“It is a significantly promoted basic fundamental human right,” Alexander said. “Many people don’t appreciate this right and fully understand that it is severely limited around the world. This has lead to more world conflict than any other issue.”
Alexander said the topic goes beyond dealing with news and media outlets, and that raising awareness will improve domestic views on “religious tolerance, acceptance, and the freedom of expression and tolerance.”
Many of the forum’s events deal with the establishment and challenges of free speech from both a national and international perspective. The schedule includes a Native American drumming performance, a poetry slam segment and the already sold-out presentation in the Carpenter Performing Arts Center by Greg Mortenson, the famed author of the novel “Three Cups of Tea.”
One event focuses on censorship during the era of McCarthyism.
Aspiring screenwriter and author Norma Barzman will be speaking about her story of exile after she refused to collaborate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities, abolished in 1975. She returned to the United States after being exiled from France to help mend the careers of film artists who were affected by the anti-communist investigations of the McCarthy Era.
Last year’s first-ever CSULB President’s Forum dealt with issues involving modern genocide as an international crime.
“We talk about a number of topics impacting international human relations,” Alexander said. “The issues are controversial. [They involve] serious constitutional issues that are timely and pertinent in other countries.”
Kenneth Curtis, the interim executive director for international education and global engagement, said the forum will bring up issues that students should engage in to become an important part of any community.
“It’s really important for universities to play this role in communities,” Curtis said. “The world we live in today is a global community. These are issues that need to be engaged in as part of democratic process.”
The forum is open to the public and free to attend. For more information, visit http://csulb.edu/president/humanrights.
CSULB President Alexander was quoted as having said: “The issues are controversial. [They involve] serious constitutional issues that are timely and pertinent in other countries.” Might I add… in our OWN country as well. Here, citizens’ rights and freedoms under the U.S. Constitution have been seriously undermined and surreptitiously compromised under the guise of the Patriot Acts and the loss of habeas corpus. This has happened with swift efficiency and, for the most part, without public awareness or understanding of the seriousness of these most basic legal breaches and human rights violations. Thus far, under the new administration in Washington, D.C., there is no indication that these violations and circumventions of the U.S. Constitution will be reversed. What, indeed, have allowed to happen in the United States of America?