The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WHAT CARTER HAD TO SAY ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS
Jimmy Carter said Thursday that he hoped President Donald Trump’s words and actions would “reinvigorate” the women’s movement in this country.
“Primarily because of President Trump’s own past record and also what he had to say about Bill O’Reilly yesterday, that he was a good guy,” Carter told a large audience at Glenn Memorial Auditorium at Emory University. “I hope that the women’s movement would be invigorated by that.”
Carter’s remark came during a question-and-answer session that followed the former president’s delivery of the Centennial David J. Bederman Lecture at the Emory University School of Law. Asked by a staff member of the Emory Wheel, the university’s student newspaper, what he thought the future was for the Black Lives Matter and women’s movements under the current administration, Carter didn’t hold back. After referencing Trump’s defense of Fox News host O’Reilly against sexual harassment claims, Carter moved on to criticize the current Justice Department for having “abandoned” efforts to improve local police departments in the area of civil rights.
“I don’t see any glimmer of hope within the administration itself,” Carter told about 1,000 people. “But I hope Black Lives Matter will continue and be enhanced, and I hope the women’s movement will continue and be enhanced.”
Carter was clearly trying not to dwell too much on politics during his speech, the theme of which was “Human Rights in Today’s World.” Several times, as when he talked about the ongoing situation in Syria, he prefaced his remarks with “I’m not going to say too much” about the current president or his administration’s policies.
But he couldn’t censor himself entirely, saying that the U.S.’ championing of human rights and international law has weakened in the past few years, a trend that’s only intensifying now.
“The debate in the last two to three days, Syria is still at the forefront, with, I would say, Russia and Iran basically supporting (President Bashar) Assad and the U.S. on the other side,” said Carter, who didn’t go into specifics about what he thought Trump would do about the chemical bombing earlier this week of a Syrian rebel stronghold. “We’ve seen in (Trump’s) campaign, he promised that in effect human rights as a standard or commitment of U.S. (policy) would be no longer applicable. I was at his inauguration, and I flinched a little bit when he said the American way of life would no longer be forced on the world’s people. I interpreted that as meaning human rights.”
If the tone of Carter’s speech was somewhat pessimistic, no one should have been surprised at its theme. Carter, 92, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights.” And he hasn’t let up, not even when it’s meant wading into such controversial issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Trump’s comments during the presidential campaign about Muslims and Mexican immigrants.
Being a human rights advocate isn’t for everyone, Carter said.
“If you run for office to be a champion for human rights, it may not be the most popular thing you do,” he quipped. And right now in this country, he suggested, it may be a matter of playing the long game.
“The will of the American people now is kind of America first and let’s not impose our commitment to human rights on other people, which I think is a tragedy,” Carter said. “But I don’t see a way to change it with the current administration in Washington.”