BOSTON, Mass.—The Armenian Heritage Foundation’s K. George and Carolann S. Najarian, M.D. Inaugural Lecture on Human Rights will be held on Thurs., Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall.
Free and open to the public, the endowed lecture is a public program of the Armenian Heritage Foundation, sponsor of Armenian Heritage Park on Boston’s Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.
Kerry Kennedy, a human rights activist, the founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in Washington, D.C., and the author of Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who are Changing Our World, is the keynote speaker. Kennedy has worked on diverse human rights issues such as children’s rights, child labor, disappearances, indigenous land rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression, ethnic violence, impunity, and the environment. She has concentrated specifically on women’s rights, exposing injustices and educating audiences about women’s issues, particularly honor killings, sexual slavery, domestic violence, workplace discrimination, sexual assault, abuse of prisoners, and more. Her life has been devoted to the vindication of equal justice, to the promotion and protection of basic rights, and to the preservation of the rule of law. She has led over 40 human rights delegations across the globe. At a time of diminished idealism and growing cynicism about public service, her life and lectures are testaments to the commitment to the basic values of human rights. She is the best-selling author of Being Catholic Now, Prominent Americans Talk about Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning. She is the mother of three daughters, Cara, Mariah, and Michaela.
Opening remarks will be offered by Peter Balakian, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities at Colgate University, and author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response-A History of International Human Rights and Forgotten Heroes, which was the inspiration for this series. He wrote of the New England women and men—intellectuals, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens—who, beginning in the 1890’s at Faneuil Hall, heard the eyewitness accounts of the atrocities taking place against the Armenian minority of the Ottoman Empire during the World War I and were called to action. Distinguished Bostonians, among them Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton,
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Alice Stone Blackwell, heard these accounts and were moved to assist the Armenians. As a result, the American Red Cross launched its first international mission with Clara Barton bringing aid to the Armenians. Philanthropists nationwide raised over $100 million in aid. This was America’s first internationally focused human rights movement.
The inaugural lecture is being offered in partnership with the Bostonian Society, academic institutions and human rights organizations. The purpose of the endowed lecture series is to advance understanding of human rights issues and the societal abuses faced by millions today, and to increase awareness of the work of individuals and organizations dedicated to eliminating these injustices so that we are all more actively engaged.
Governor Deval L. Patrick and Mayor Thomas M. Menino are honorary chairs. Co-chairs of the inaugural lecture representing their participating organization are Martha F. Davis, PhD, faculty director, Northeastern School of Law, Human Rights and the Global Economy; A. Frank Donaghue, CEO and deputy director, Physicians for Human Rights USA; Michael A. Grodin, M.D., executive director, Global Lawyers and Physicians Working Together for Human Rights, Boston University School of Public Health; David Hollenbach, S.J., director. Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice; Shant Mardirossian, chairman of the Board, Near East Foundation; Margot Stern Strom, founder/executive director, Facing History and Ourselves; Adam Strom, director of research and development, Facing History and Ourselves; Deborah W. Nutter, Ph.D., senior associate dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Ph.D., acting director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Human Rights and Justice; and Joshua Rubenstein, northeast regional director, Amnesty International USA.
The Armenian Heritage Foundation’s annual lecture on human rights has been generously endowed by K. George and Carolann S. Najarian, M.D, in honor of Dr. Najarian’s late father, Avedis Abrahamian. “This endowed lecture on human rights is in my father’s honor as he taught so many about the need to pay attention, to spot injustice and to speak out where ever and whenever it occurs,” said Dr. Carolann Najarian.
In addition to the endowed annual lecture on human rights in partnership with the Bostonian Society, academic institutions, and human rights organizations, endowed funds also support the Armenian Heritage Park’s annual care, reconfiguration of the sculpture, and public programs.
A gift to the City of Boston and Commonwealth, Armenian Heritage Park celebrates the immigrant experience and commemorates lives lost during the 1915 Armenian Genocide and all genocides that continue to follow. For more information, visit www.ArmenianHeritagePark.net.
Human’s Rights*
Do not seize me in your cave
Open your door let me behave
To see the world in its fight
To try to protect every human right!
Let me grasp a red pen in hot hands,
Writing poems for justify rationales.
Let me write to billions of inhumane minds,
Let them feel ashamed of sinful fights.
Let the righteous rays shine on everyone
To guide spirits into the right light.
Let harsh minds listen every night
To symphonies praising humans’ right.
I am yours, always yours.
No one can grab me by force.
I like to scream very loud;
Human rights are everyone’s birth right.
Let my voice, from the heartiest soul,
Reach further than both polar sites.
Let tears of the speakers on human rights
Flows like waterfalls on starved lands.
Don’t hide me in an unsown cave,
I’m kind and heartily brave;
I have genes to know every right,
From sunshine to moon light.
Let all raise the faithful flag of human rights,
In the suppressed corners of ‘Crying Crowds’
To detect, narrate, yet prevent birthing crimes.
Let slayers confess past deeds, thus prevent further Genocides**.
2006
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* This poem is modified from my first book Lance My Hart at a Glance 2007
** from my book A Poetic Soul Shined of Genocides 2008
The US government has a double standard towards human rights. It speaks about human rights violations of it’s enemies but ignores the human rights of it’s allies such as Turkey who are committing a genocide against the Kurds, the Baharaini government who is massacring Shiite protestors who want democracy. The US government did nothing to stop the Cambodian genocide and even provided arms to the Khmer Rouge who committed the genocide. Furthermore the US government did nothing to stop the Rwandan Genocide but it certainly intervened to stop the phony so called human rights violations of the Serbians while ignoring the human rights violations of the Kosovo Liberation Army who sold the organs of dead Serbians and this is fact.