Bruce Kochis

Bruce Kochis is senior Lecturer of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Bothell. He obtained a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature, focusing on linguistics and literary theory.

Professor Kochis teach courses in international human rights, political culture and public policy, and Eastern European history and culture with special emphasis on human rights development in emerging democracies. I am a founder of the University of Washington’s Human Rights Education and Research Network and its former director.

His current research is a comparative analysis of the construction and implementation of human rights in developed and developing societies with particular attention to how discourse shapes political and cultural agendas. For example, the term “human rights” is deployed by various state and non-state actors to achieve a variety of ends, some of which might be consistent with the international human rights regime, while others might not. Under this analysis, “human rights” is viewed not as absolute moral category but as an open discourse in which individuals, cultures, and societies debate their ultimate values and goals.