Dr. Nesiah to deliver 14th Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture

Wednesday, 24 July 2013 00:45 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The 14th Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Vasuki Nesiah, Associate Professor of Practice, New York University. Titled ‘The law, this violent thing’, Dr. Nesiah will in her lecture use the ancient Greek play ‘Antigone’ as the anchor to explore the themes of dissent, transitional justice and the politics of pluralism.

She will do so relying on ‘Antigonick’, the interpretive poem-translation by Anne Carson, a scholar of ancient Greek. Dr. Nesiah teaches human rights, law and social theory and international legal studies at New York University, and prior to that she taught at Brown University and Columbia University. Currently, her main areas of research include the law and politics of international human rights and humanitarianism, with a particular focus on transitional justice. Before entering academia full time, Nesiah spent several years in practice at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), where she worked on law and policy issues in the field of post-conflict human rights. Originally from Sri Lanka, she earned her B.A. in Philosophy and Government at Cornell University (1990), and earned her J.D. (1993) and S.J.D. (2000) at Harvard Law School. The event will be held on Sunday, 28 July 2013 at 6 p.m. at the BMICH, Committee Room B. The lecture will be chaired by Dr. Radhika Coomara-swamy, who served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from April 2006 to July 2012. The lecture is held in the memory of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam who was a legislator, constitutional lawyer and institution builder who strived to achieve democracy, peace and reconciliation during his lifetime. This event is part of a lecture series held every year since his untimely demise on 29 July 1999.