Human Rights

Judith Blau is Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, retiring in 2014 after a teaching career that spanned 45 years. In 2012 she was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the American Sociological Association. She is past president of the Southern Sociological Society, and former editor of Social Forces and of Societies without Borders. Her books include the 1st edition of the Primer; Sociology and Human Rights (2011); The World and U.S. Social Forums (2009); The Leading Rogue State (2008); Freedoms and Solidarities (2007); Public Sociology Reader (2006); Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision (2005); Blackwell Companion to Sociology (2004); and Race in the Schools (2003). She continues to teach at the Open University of Wellfleet while living on Cape Cod and serves on the Barnstable Human Rights Commission.

Louis Edgar Esparza is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at California State University at Los Angeles. His work focuses on grassroots social movements, their organizations and their strategies. Louis has been a Visiting Scholar at both Sophia University and Chuo University in Tokyo, an affiliated researcher at the Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogota, and Lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. His research has appeared in Sociological Forum, Contemporary Justice Review, Environment & Society, Qualitative Sociology, and Societies Without Borders. His essays have appeared in The Progressive & In These Times.