Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

No American political leader has done more to advance human rights as an integral element of U.S. policy than Jimmy Carter. He called human rights “the soul of our foreign policy.” Carter’s commitment flowed naturally from his experience growing up in rural Georgia, where he saw “the effects of a system of deprivation of rights.” His embrace of human rights drew on his deep religious faith and commitment to equality, buoyed by what he saw as the “cleansing energies that were released when my own region of this country walked out of darkness.”

In his inaugural address as governor in 1971, Carter proclaimed, “The time for racial discrimination is over.” Ahead of his time and to the consternation of many political leaders in attendance that day, he stressed that “no poor, rural, weak or Black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job or simple justice.” As governor he recruited a number of African Americans to serve on various state commissions and boards, including the first African American to serve on the Board of Regents of the University of Georgia.

Six years later in his inaugural address as president, Carter underscored the importance human rights would play in his administration’s foreign policy. “Because we are free,” he said, “we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” As Jonathan Alter wrote in his excellent book His Very Best: Jimmy Carter a Life from day one Carter began integrating human rights in ways large and small. In his first week in office, he received a note from Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident and Nobel Prize-winning scientist, seeking U.S. advocacy for political prisoners there. Carter wrote to Sakharov, emphasizing the centrality of human rights to his administration. Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev responded furiously, telling Carter that Moscow would not tolerate “interference in our internal affairs, whatever pseudo-humanitarian slogans are used to present it.” Years later, Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime Soviet ambassador to Washington, conceded that Carter’s support for human rights activists “played a significant role” in loosening the Soviet grip at home and among its Eastern European satellites.

Read the full Forbes article.
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Michael Posner is the Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance, Professor of Business and Society and Director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.