From Selma to Moscow

How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-16946-2
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 159 mm, Gewicht: 560 g

The 1960s marked a transformation of human rights activism in the United States. At a time of increased concern for the rights of their fellow citizens—civil and political rights, as well as the social and economic rights that Great Society programs sought to secure—many Americans saw inconsistencies between domestic and foreign policy and advocated for a new approach. The activism that arose from the upheavals of the 1960s fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy—yet previous accounts have often overlooked its crucial role.

In From Selma to Moscow, Sarah B. Snyder traces the influence of human rights activists and advances a new interpretation of U.S. foreign policy in the “long 1960s.” She shows how transnational connections and social movements spurred American activism that achieved legislation that curbed military and economic assistance to repressive governments, created institutions to monitor human rights around the world, and enshrined human rights in U.S. foreign policy making for years to come. Snyder analyzes how Americans responded to repression in the Soviet Union, racial discrimination in Southern Rhodesia, authoritarianism in South Korea, and coups in Greece and Chile. By highlighting the importance of nonstate and lower-level actors, Snyder shows how this activism established the networks and tactics critical to the institutionalization of human rights. A major work of international and transnational history, From Selma to Moscow reshapes our understanding of the role of human rights activism in transforming U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s and highlights timely lessons for those seeking to promote a policy agenda resisted by the White House.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Snyder, Sarah B.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Außenpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Menschenrechte, Bürgerrechte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Human Rights Activism Directed Across the Iron Curtain
2. A Double Standard Abroad and at Home? Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence
3. Causing Us “Real Trouble”: The 1967 Coup in Greece
4. Does the United States Stand for Something? Human Rights in South Korea
5. Translating Human Rights into the Language of Washington: American Activism in the Wake of the Coup in Chile
6. “A Call for U.S. Leadership”: Congressional Activism on Human Rights
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Sarah B. Snyder is a historian who teaches at American University’s School of International Service. She is the author of the award-winning Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War: A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network (2011).