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Professor Picked for European Seminar

Whelan, Daniel - 20101007 - 11131030CONWAY, Ark. (September 25, 2013) – Hendrix politics and international relations professor Dr. Daniel Whelan was selected to participate in the Kanderstag Seminar this spring. The seminar, held yearly in Switzerland, is sponsored by the Remarque Institute at New York University.

Each year’s seminar is a private gathering of young historians of contemporary Europe to discuss a given theme or topic. This year’s theme will be the New International Economic Order proposals of the 1970s and their ramifications across the globe.

“The NIEO process is relatively understudied anymore, but it’s starting to get the attention of historians of human rights, in particular,” said Whelan, who is the Charles Prentiss Hough Odyssey Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations and chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Hendrix. “In my 2010 book, Indivisible Human Rights, I spent some time discussing how human rights got really side-tracked in the mid-1970s at the UN as calls for development resources and ‘economic justice’ took over.”

Last fall, the journal Humanity issued a call for paper proposals on the topic of human rights in the 1970s, especially related to the NIEO. The call happened to coincide with research Whelan was doing while he was on sabbatical in London, where he traced the genealogy of the ‘right to development,’ for which the whole NIEO movement was crucial.

“This work dovetails very nicely with new courses and student engagement activities in the areas of human rights and development that I am pursuing through my Odyssey Professorship, such as my Ethics and Development course in the spring,” he said.

“Being selected as a participant for the Kandesteg Seminar is among the most thrilling honors I’ve ever received,” he added.

Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the sixth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report.  Hendrix is featured in the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, as well as the 2014 Princeton Review’s The Best 378 Colleges, Forbes magazine's list of America's Top Colleges, and the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu.