American Scientists and Human Rights from the Early Republic to the Cold War

Paul Rubinson is Professor of History at Bridgewater State University. He is the author of Redefining Science: Scientists, the National Security State and Nuclear Weapons in Cold War America (2016) and Rethinking the American Antinuclear Movement (2018).

• Part I. From the Early Republic to the Civil War: 1. The mistress of the sciences: scientific internationalism, American identity, and human rights in the early republic; 2. Joseph Priestley in the republic of science: politics, natural philosophy, and American freedom; 3. From human rights to states' rights: Thomas Cooper, science, and slavery; Part II. The Early Twentieth Century through the Second World War: 4. Proletarian science and radical eugenics: Vladimir Ipatieff, H. J. Muller, and human rights in the Soviet Union; 5. The chance of a life: rescuing Jewish scientists in the 1930s; 6. The imperative to contribute: refugee scientists from the second world war to the universal declaration of human rights; Part III. The Cold War and the 1970s; 7. Détente and scientific dissidents: the discovery of Andrei Sakharov; 8. the American refuseniks: scientific internationalism, the Helsinki final act, and human rights activism in the 1970s; 9. The transformation of human rights activism: women scientists, south Americans, and Sakharov in the 1980s; Conclusion. 'Science Makes America Great'