Please join us for a book talk by Payam Akhavan, Professor of International Law at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, a Member of the International Court of Arbitration, and a former UN prosecutor at The Hague. In his book, “In Search of a Better World,” he argues that deceptive utopias, political cynicism, and public apathy have given rise to major human rights abuses: from the religious persecution of Iranian Bahá’ís that shaped his personal life, to the horrors of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda, and the rise of contemporary phenomena such as the Islamic State. Payam also argues for an empathy based approach to human rights that gives primacy to the experience of survivors and acknowledges our inextricable interdependence as a global society.