Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, will be the keynote speaker for "Moral Mathematics: the Science of Human Rights," a conference at Duke University on science and human rights protection.
Ebadi, who founded and runs the Association for Support of Children's Rights in Iran, was one of the first female judges in Iran. She served from 1975-79 as president of the city court of Tehran, but was forced to resign after the 1979 revolution. She also was a professor at the University of Tehran.
She will speak on women and human rights at 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 11, in the Richard White Auditorium on Duke's East Campus. Duke Provost Peter Lange will introduce her.
The "Moral Mathematics" conference will take place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 12, in Old Chemistry 116 on West Campus. The events are free and open to the public.
Ebadi is noted for promoting peaceful, democratic solutions to problems while also recognizing the unique challenges that Islamic countries face. Despite her disagreements with Iran's ruling mullahs, Ebadi says that Islam is compatible with modern democracy.
Accepting the 2003 Nobel, Ebadi said, "The discriminatory plight of women in Islamic states, too, whether in the sphere of civil law or in the realm of social, political and cultural justice, has its roots in the patriarchal and male-dominated culture prevailing in these societies, not in Islam. This culture does not tolerate freedom and democracy, just as it does not believe in the equal rights of men and women, and the liberation of women from male domination (fathers, husbands, brothers), because it would threaten the historical and traditional position of the rulers and guardians of that culture."
Robin Kirk, director of the Duke Human Rights Center, said Ebadi "is one of the great leaders of our time, combining a fierce dedication to human rights with a determination to make change on terms than can be embraced within Islam."
Sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center and RTI International, "Moral Mathematics: the Science of Human Rights" will examine how the quantitative sciences -- including statistics, economics and demography -- contribute to human rights improvement around the world.
In Peru, for instance, a rigorous statistical analysis revealed for the first time that the Shining Path guerrillas had been responsible for the majority of killings. Patrick Ball, a participant in the conference and the director of the Human Rights Program at the Benetech Initiative in Palo Alto, Calif., used statistical methods during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in Peru from 2001 to 2003 to estimate the number of casualties in the decades-long conflict. While official sources came up with an estimate of 24,000 deaths, Ball provided the more realistic number of 70,000.
"Moral Mathematics" participants also include Beth Daponte, a research professor at the Carnegie Mellon University who criticized how the U.S. Department of Defense counted civilian victims of the 1991 Gulf War; Lara Wolfson, from the World Health Organization, who will speak about counting unsettled populations; Chris Krebs and Rachel Caspar of RTI International, who will speak about how to measure incidents of sexual assault among prison inmates in the United States; and Duke professor Diane Nelson, who brings an anthropological perspective to the study of populations decimated by genocide in Guatemala.
The events are co-sponsored by the Karl von der Heyden endowment, the Trent Foundation, the Duke University Libraries, the Duke Center for International Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Women's Studies at Duke and the Duke chapter of Amnesty International.
Event information is available at http://www.duke.edu/web/rightsatduke/.