September 25, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

Oberlin, Ohio--Dr. William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA and an Oberlin College alumnus will return to his alma mater Thursday, October 5 to present a lecture at 4:30 p.m. titled "Torture, Torment and Tyranny--The State of Human Rights."

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be given in the College’s Hallock Auditorium, located in the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, 122 Elm Street

A member of the Class of 1971, Dr. Schulz is the first speaker in a series of two Oberlin College lectures this year dedicated to the challenges of national security in the 21st century. On Wednesday, November 15, also at 4:30 p.m., defense expert Pierre Sprey will discuss "The Defense Paradox: More Dollars, Less National Security." Both talks are being presented in coordination with the Oberlin College course U.S. Foreign Policy Making taught by Eve Sandberg, associate professor of politics.

A much in-demand speaker, Dr. Schulz has appeared frequently on radio and television, including 60 Minutes, 20/20, The Today Show, and Good Morning, America as well as on NPR programs and the BBC and CNN, among others. He is published and widely read in newspapers and magazines through-out the U.S., and is the author of several books, including the forthcoming work, tentatively titled: Profiting from Justice: Why Human Rights Are in Americans’ Best Interest.

An ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, Dr. Schulz came to Amnesty International in 1994 after serving for 15 years with the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, the last eight years as president, and as such was involved in a wide variety of international and social justice causes, including leading the first visit by a U.S. member of Congress to post-revolutionary Romania in 1991 two weeks after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu.

He spent February 1992 in India in consultation with the Holdeen India Fund, which is dedicated to ending communal violence and to the political and economic empowerment of women, bonded laborers and others. He led fact-finding missions to the Middle East and Northern Ireland and was instrumental in his denomination’s opposition to U.S. military aid to El Salvador.

During his years with Amnesty, Dr. Schulz has traveled extensively both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1997, he led an Amnesty mission to Liberia to investigate atrocities committed during the civil war there, and in 1999, he returned to Northern Ireland with the human rights organization to insist that human rights protections be incorporated into the peace process.

The Oberlin graduate was named one of the "World’s 365 Most Influential People" by The Pray 365 Project and was chosen "Humanist of the Year" by the American Humanist Association in 2000. He is currently a member of the International Advisory Committee for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and is chair of the board of Meadville/Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago.

His degrees include the B.A. degree from Oberlin in 1971, and the M.A. in theology (1973), M.A. in philosophy (1974), and Doctorate of Ministry (1975) from the University of Chicago .

Oberlin's politics department is sponsoring the lectures with the support of the Richard R. Hallock Foundation. The late Richard Reid Hallock '41 had a deep interest in issues of national security and was an advisor to U. S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger.

Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli 9/25/00 #22 bg