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Professor Jay Drydyk – Human Dignity and Human Development Conference 

Professor Jay Drydyk at the University of Notre Dame. Courtesy of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Professor Jay Drydyk at the University of Notre Dame. Courtesy of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

NOTRE DAME, IN – On October 22-24, Jay Drydyk, professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, was a major contributor at the second international Human Dignity and Human Development Conference hosted by the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. The conference is part of a multi-year research initiative investigating the role of human dignity in the practice of international development.

Drydyk related the importance of human dignity to development. “Justice requires minimally that everyone is at capability levels which are environmentally sustainable for everyone,” he said in discussing Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s capability approach to development. “Any inequalities beyond that do not satisfy human dignity.”

At the conference, development practitioners and scholars examined the implications of human dignity for development theory and practice, considering whether human dignity can serve as a common connector among predominant development frameworks, including the capability, wellbeing, and happiness approaches.

“Approaching human development from the perspective of human dignity serves as a locus across differences that might otherwise be intractable in the global environment,” said Kellogg Institute Director and legal scholar Paolo Carozza, who leads the initiative.

Part of a series of gatherings that make up the larger research initiative, the conference aspires to produce viable recommendations for implementing the emphasis on human dignity explicit in the United Nations’ post-2015 sustainable development agenda.

The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the University of Notre Dame’s new Keough School of Global Affairs, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars and students from across the University and around the world that promotes research, provides educational opportunities, and builds linkages related to two topics critical to our world — democracy and human development.