For 100 years, Carnegie Council has worked with prominent academic and leaders on issues concerning policy, peace, ethics, and international affairs. In honor of our centennial, we posted 100 of the most interesting and historically significant materials from our archives.
On this page, we have curated primary sources from our archives that relate to peacemaking and social justice issues. We also have a series of our favorite primary sources for the classroom, a selection relating to ethics and war as well as a full list of our 100 for 100.
Visiting Mahatma Gandhi, 1929
Henry Atkinson
In 1928-29, Henry Atkinson, president of the Church Peace Union (now Carnegie Council) took a five-month trip through Asia to meet with religious leaders and persuade them to work together for world peace. In this fascinating excerpt from his travel diary he records his visit with Mahatma Gandhi, who is very welcoming and gracious, but skeptical.
A New Sense of Direction (1968)
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. King gave this speech just a few months before his assassination and it is his last thorough evaluation of the movement. Still sadly relevant, he discusses U.S. racism, injustice, and militarism, and despite all, reaffirms his commitment to non-violence.
The New Dimensions of Human Rights
Zbigniew Brzezinski
"The interface between ethics and science will hence be the new frontier of politics—the third new dimension of human rights," warns Zbigniew Brzezinski in this 1995 lecture. Increasingly, politics is likely to be dominated by ethical dilemmas stimulated by science's potential for reshaping the very nature of the human being.
Human Rights and Asian Values
Amartya Sen
Human rights are neither a uniquely Western phenomenon nor a hindrance to economic development, the charges usually leveled against those who seek to implement human rights in Asia. In this valuable 1997 lecture, Amartya Sen points to intellectual strands within Asian thought that value human rights.
Technology and Social Justice
Freeman Dyson
"How can we make ethics drive technology in such a way that the evil consequences are minimized and the good maximized?" In this insightful and visionary 1997 talk, Freeman Dyson looks back at the effects of past innovations and forward to cheap solar energy, genetic engineering of industrial crop plants, and universal access to the Internet.
The Marsh Arabs of Iraq: The Legacy of Saddam Hussein and an Agenda for Restoration and Justice
Rasheed Bander Al-Khayoun, Anna Sophia Bachmann, Joanne Bauer, Joseph Dellapenna, Sayyed Nadeem Kazmi, Curtis J. Richardson, Nik Wheeler
While Saddam Hussein's persecution of the Kurds is well known, few are aware that he drained Iraq's southern marshlands as part of a deliberate strategy to destroy the lives of the region's inhabitants, known as the Marsh Arabs. This 2004 panel discusses their plight and what is being done to restore at least part of the marshes.
"Saving Amina": Global Justice for Women and Intercultural Dialogue [Abstract]
Alison M. Jaggar
Western moral and political theorists have devoted much attention to the victimization of women by non-western cultures, wrote Alison Jaggar in 2005. But, conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures yields an imcomplete understanding of their situation.