Join us for the launch of
The Richard McKeon Center
Thursday, October 12, 2023
David Rubenstein Forum
Friedman Hall
1201 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
RECEPTION 5:30-6:30 P.M.
PROGRAM Fionnuala Ní Aoláin in conversation with Tom Ginsburg 6:30-7:45 P.M.
The McKeon Center will explore the many intellectual legacies of the University of Chicago philosopher, classicist, and human rights advocate Richard McKeon. With its mission of investigating the historical and cultural forces that shape knowledge across disciplinary lines, the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge is delighted to host this dynamic new center, bringing renewed attention to McKeon's investigation into systems of knowledge organization and his own intellectual pluralism.
Please join us for a conversation about the relationship of human rights, free expression, and above all, frameworks for understanding the world.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, and the Regents Professor and Robina Professor of Law, Public Policy and Society at the University of Minnesota Law School and Professor of Law at the Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Professor Ní Aoláin is the recipient of numerous academic awards and honors including the Leverhulme Fellowship, British Academy Awards, Fulbright scholarship, the Alon Prize, the Robert Schumann Scholarship, a European Commission award, the Lawlor fellowship, and is an elected fellow of the Royal Irish Academy. She has published extensively in the fields of emergency powers, counter-terrorism and human rights, conflict regulation, transitional justice and sex based violence in times of war. Her book Law in Times of Crisis (CUP 2006) was awarded the American Society of International Law’s preeminent prize in 2007 - the Certificate of Merit for creative scholarship and her published work has been extensively recognized for its path-breaking contributions and rigor.
Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he serves as Faculty Director for the Forum on Free Inquiry and Expression, as well as the Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity. He co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789, that runs the award-winning Constitute website. His latest book is Democracies and International Law (2021), winner of Best Book Prizes from the American Branch of the International Law Association and the American Society for International Law. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before entering law teaching, he served as a legal advisor at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, The Hague, Netherlands, and he has consulted with numerous international development agencies and governments on legal and constitutional reform. He currently serves a senior advisor on Constitution Building to International IDEA. Professor Ginsburg is a Core Faculty at the Insitute on the Formation of Knowledge.