A call to action for our times, Payam Akhavan’s 2017 CBC Massey Lectures, In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey, is a powerful survey of some of the major human rights struggles of our times — and what we can do about it.
Payam Akhavan is a Professor of International Law at McGill University (with prior academic appointments at Yale, Toronto, Oxford, and Paris), a Member of the International Court of Arbitration, and a former UN prosecutor at The Hague.
He has served with the UN in conflict zones around the world, including Bosnia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Timor Leste, and as legal counsel in landmark cases before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States.
Professor Akhavan served as Chair of the Global Conference on Prevention of Genocide, and he’s a Founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre. His human rights career has been featured in the New York Times, BBC HardTalk, Maclean’s, the Toronto Star, and the Montreal Gazette.
His companion book to the 2017 Massey Lectures, In Search of a Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey (House of Anansi Press) became the top non- fiction bestseller in Canada. Copies will be on sale at the event.