Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J., a priest and professor of law at Georgetown University, will speak in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 24 on “The Promised Ethical Land: A World View of Human Rights.” The talk, and a catered reception to follow, sponsored by the Schwemm Fund, are free and open to the public.
Drinan served as a Democratic representative from Massachusetts in Congress from 1971 until 1981, when Pope John Paul II told him he must choose between politics and the priesthood. An outspoken progressive in politics, Drinan had been elected in opposition to the war in Vietnam.
He has taught at Oxford University; at the law schools of the University of Colorado, the University of Michigan, New York University, Boston College and the University of Texas; and at Swarthmore College and Andover-Newton Theological Seminary. He is the chairman of the Standing Committee on Professionalism for the American Bar Association.
Drinan remains a leading voice in the movement for human rights, and has served with People for the American Way, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Bread for the World and the Council for a Livable World Educational Fund. He was a founding member of the Lawyer’s Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control and the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry. He has also been an officer of Americans for Democratic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
A frequent contributor to law reviews and journals of policy and opinion, Drinan wrote The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights (2001), The Fractured Dream (1991) and Lies From the American Soul (1990), among many other books.
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