President Jimmy Carter Visits Yale
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, spoke at Yale's Woolsey Hall on December 2. The discussion, hosted by the Center for the Study of Globalization, focused on issues facing women and girls worldwide, from genital mutilation and slavery to low wages for women and sexual assaults on campus. Carter, who served as president from 1977 to 1981 and received the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global issues with the Carter Center, was on campus promoting his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.
Carter spoke about the importance of principles in a changing world:
In a fast changing technical world, there are new ideas, and new challenges and new opportunities and new problems that come up. But there are certain principles that never change. And I say they are basically expressed in our great religions and other moral values. The most clear secular expression of the highest ideals of human beings was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, I believe. And that expresses the highest patterns that we can set for ourselves or anyone under us, and I try to live by that.