In a statement, Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, responded to Pompeo’s criticism.
“Project 1619, based on decades of recent historical studies that has deepened our understanding of the country’s founding, is one of the most striking journalism works published last year,” he said. “We are proud that it continues to generate a dialogue that allows us to re-examine our assumptions about the past.”
Since appointing the Commission on Alienable Rights, as his panel is called, Mr. Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, has expressed confidence that he would create a document that enshrines religious freedom as a central tenet of American rights policy. human, what diplomats could refer to as “decades to come.”
But human rights scholars warned that this could set a global precedent for other nations to define human rights on their own terms, undermining diplomatic efforts to stop the persecution of religious minorities in places like China, or promoting rights. of women in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
“You are seeing the rise of autocrats around the world,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, an international human rights organization. “You’re giving those people a gift, and you’re not just taking away the leadership of the US, but you’re also giving them and giving them arguments that they’ve been making for a long time.”
The commission is chaired by Mary Ann Glendon, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former ambassador to the Vatican. She is a leading anti-abortion activist who has sparked controversy in recent years by commenting that awarding the Boston Globe the Pulitzer Prize for her reports of child abuse by Catholic priests “would be like handing over the Nobel Peace Prize to Osama bin Laden. “
The panel is also based on the vision of Robert P. George, a Princeton professor and leading proponent of “natural law” theory, a term that human rights experts say is a code for “God-given rights “and is commonly deployed in struggles to undo the rights of LGBTQ women and people.
The commission’s draft report will undergo a two-week public comment period before it is final.
