A broad spectrum: ISU Human Rights Day covers the gamut

Mar. 14—If this is a fairly dispiriting time for human rights, then Tuesday was a good time for Indiana State University to host a Human Rights Day, with an array of sessions inviting attendees to consider the world around them.

Audience members included community members, ISU students and 250 high-school students from Terre Haute North, Terre Haute South, West Vigo and Sullivan High School.

"It's a great outreach to bring our high school students to campus, but also other community members and even our own college students to attend and to really understand what human rights are," said Jessica Starr, director for the Center for Community Engagement at ISU.

Starr, along with a committee composed of staff and faculty members and community members, began organizing the event last September.

One of the first speakers was Jeannie Ludlow, a professor of English and the director of gender studies at Eastern Illinois University as well as a former abortion care provider. Her topic was "Human Rights and Reproductive Justice."

Reproductive justice seeks to rally the pro-life and pro-choice movements, she said, noting that neither side fully addresses people's personal experiences or helps families in need.

"What's happening in the country today is this increasing polarization," Ludlow said in an interview. "That's what a lot of people believe reproductive justice can start to challenge, because the more we realize how complicated people's lives are, the less likely we are to think there's a yes or no answer to anything."

She added, "I'm in Illinois, you all are in Indiana, so even just crossing that border, there's a huge difference in our legal structure, and one of the things that I think we're gonna have to do if we're going to be able to come together as a country and make different laws — the only way to make different laws is to work through those politicians. We can't ignore them and we need to be confident and comfortable speaking to them.

"Reproductive justice gives a lot of people who are very uncomfortable with the idea of abortion, which is an uncomfortable topic, it gives them a place to stand and speak where they don't have to have to have a pro-life/pro-choice argument, but they can still talk about how important it is to respect people's lives and honor the complexity of them," Ludlow concluded.

Another demographic seeing rights under attack today is the LGBTQ+ community, which Katie Lugar and William Edwards, interim co-presidents of the Pride Center of Terre Haute, took on during their session on LGBTQ+ issues.

"Today's session might be a little bleak," Lugar told those assembled at the session's outset. She said that there are currently 409 anti-LGBTQ bills in legislatures throughout the country, including 22 in Indiana (the American Civil Liberties Union usually signals a warning when such pieces of legislation are proposed in Indiana).

Edwards listed four of the most troublesome bills before Indiana's current legislature, focused largely on the treatment of minors but employing purposefully vague language.

"[Politicians] know what they're doing," Edwards said. "You deserve a safe state to live in."

In some states, the discussion Lugar and Edwards conducted before high school students would have them looking at jail time, they said.

"What we're seeing is an increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation that particularly restricts conversation about LGBTQ experiences and issues within K-12 settings," Lugar conceded. "We're really excited to have the opportunity today that before things change in our state that we get to be able to talk to you in our community. We're still fighting against legislation that would restrict these conversations."

Barbara Skinner, an ISU professor of history specializing in the history of Russia, Eastern Europe and Russian/Ukrainian relations, spoke on "War Crimes and Human Rights in the War in Ukraine."

"I was horrified" when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Skinner said. She said she wanted to examine "how you apply human rights into a wartime situation."

Other sessions covered the death penalty, workers' rights, social and economic rights, affordable housing, the value of diversity and inclusion, student engagement and activism, and the struggles of Morocco's indigenous people.

David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at david.kronke@tribstar.com.