2025 CBC Massey Lectures: Alex Neve on renewing human rights in a fractured world

This is not the finest hour for human rights, says 2025 CBC Massey Lecturer Alex Neve. But it still could be.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created 1948, after the untold carnage and horror of the Second World War. It was supposed to prevent what we’re seeing right now: the rise of hate and mass atrocities. A crumbling world order. Human rights applied selectively, or withdrawn on the whims of political leaders.

In five lectures delivered across Canada, Neve explores where the promise of universal human rights comes from, where we’ve fallen short, and what we can do now to renew the promise of universality.

Neve is a human rights lawyer who served as Secretary-General of Amnesty International Canada from 2000 to 2020. In this role, he was involved in over 40 human rights research and campaign delegations to more than 20 countries.

As a committed human rights advocate, Neve argues we each have a responsibility to uphold human rights — it’s in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“It is very tempting right now to feel, not only that we’re losing ground, but that we maybe lost the battle. But I will not go there. We cannot go there,” Neve told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed in a recent interview.

His Massey Lectures, titled Universal: Renewing Human Rights in a Fractured World, follows in the tradition of lecturers that includes Tanya Talaga, Margaret Atwood and Martin Luther King Jr.

The lectures are available as a book, published by House of Anansi Press.

Lecture 1: The beacon of universal human rights

Universality is the core promise of human rights: these rights extend to everyone, everywhere. But above all else, this is where we have fallen short, says Neve.

In his first Massey Lecture, Neve explores what it means to make a human rights promise, how it changes us to break a promise, and how to ensure the “lifeboat” of human rights is seaworthy for everyone.

Civilian protection is a core human rights promise. Yet civilians are deliberately sacrificed in wars everywhere. Does the promise to civilians that they will be protected mean anything anymore?– An excerpt from Alex Neve’s 2025 Massey Lectures

Lecture 2: Human rights lessons from history

The ideals behind the concept of human rights — such as the sacredness of life, reciprocity, justice and fairness — have millennia-old histories. But after the carnage of the Second World War and the Holocaust, human rights took a new legal form.

In his second Massey Lecture, Neve considers six dizzying years that laid out a blueprint for a new world — and the wisdom, challenges, and tensions we’ve inherited from our predecessors.

Lecture 3: Human rights are not earned

Our inherent human rights belong to us from the moment we are born. There is nothing we need to do to earn them, and they are supposed to apply to us until the day we die.

But in his third Massey Lecture, Neve argues the powerful have made human rights a “club,” constantly shifting the goal posts to decide who deserves rights and who does not.

Lecture 4: Human rights made real

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that universal human rights begin in “small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.”

In his fourth Massey Lecture, Neve reflects on moments in history when people-power won the day. And he shares what 40 years on the frontlines of international human rights have taught him about belief, doubt, and the long arc of change.

How do ‘we the peoples’ triumph when so much stands in the way? It begins with believing in human rights, even when there may seem to be every reason not to.– Alex Neve writes in his 2025 Massey Lectures

Lecture 5: Renewing Canada’s commitment to universal human rights

Over his long career in human rights, Neve has heard Canada described as “the land of human rights” — and seen the profound ways Canada has failed to uphold universal human rights, both at home and abroad.

In his final Massey Lecture, he lays out his vision for a way forward.

Download the IDEAS podcast to listen to Alex Neve’s 2025 Massey Lectures.

The CBC Massey Lectures are a partnership between CBC, House of Anansi Press and Massey College in the University of Toronto. For more, visit the archives.