Speaking Out for the Voiceless:
Preserving the Promise of Human Rights

in a Time of Change 

A Conversation with Christen Broecker

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

12:00 Noon Luncheon

Pyramid Club
1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103 

You are cordially invited to the 2025 Murray Friedman Memorial Lecture featuring Christen Broecker, Director of AJC's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI). 

The international human rights protection architecture, which American Jewish Committee (AJC) played a major role in creating and has worked to sustain and make more effective for more than 75 years, has entered a period of existential challenge. Whether and how its component parts endure will have significant consequences for all those around the world for whom the promise of universal human rights is a source of inspiration and a catalyst for change. This lecture will explore how each of us can help preserve this great achievement for humankind and take forward our commitment to support those seeking freedom and liberty in a changed world.

Featuring

Christen Broecker
Director of AJC’s Jacob Blaustein Institute

for the Advancement of Human Rights

Christen Broecker is Director of AJC’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) and spearheads its work to promote greater respect for universal human rights worldwide.

Christen joined JBI in 2010 and was its Deputy Director from 2016-2024. She has collaborated with several independent United Nations experts and bodies focused on country situations where widespread rights violations are occurring and on key thematic issues including preventing genocide, defending religious freedom, combating religious intolerance, and combating torture. She is a lead author of a UN policy paper on combating Holocaust denial and genocide denial and a manual on human rights and prevention of genocide produced by JBI in cooperation with the Office of the UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide. She has successfully urged social media companies to apply their content moderation policies consistently and to remove harmful online content including Holocaust denial in line with human rights standards. She has overseen the publication of JBI reports tracking rising global antisemitism as a human rights concern and widespread rights violations in countries including Iran, Ukraine, and Sudan. She is the author of numerous publications on U.S. foreign policy and human rights and UN human rights mechanisms and is co-editor, with former JBI Director Felice Gaer, of The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Conscience for the World (2013).

Before coming to AJC, Broecker was the NYU Fellow at Human Rights Watch where she focused on Indonesia. She received B.A. from the University of North Carolina in Peace, War, and Defense and International Studies; and a J.D. and an LL.M in International Legal Studies from New York University, where she was an Institute for International Law and Justice Scholar.

AJC’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) works to narrow the gap between the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reality. For more than 50 years, JBI has carried forward the legacy of AJC leaders such as Jacob Blaustein and Joseph Proskauer, who were official NGO consultants to the U.S. delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations in 1945 and who successfully pressed the U.S. government to insist that the UN Charter to include guarantees for international human rights. Today, working through international organizations and governments, through advocacy with experts and diplomats, and though partnerships with human rights defenders, JBI seeks to counteract the indifference that can lead to atrocities and genocide and to combat religious intolerance, end torture, and oppose all forms of discrimination, issues of central importance to the Jewish community and beyond. Our efforts aim to strengthen the effectiveness of the international human rights architecture and ensure it shines a light on the most serious violations requiring international attention while affirming the equal rights of all.

The Murray Freidman Memorial Lecture honors the legacy of noted Jewish activist and scholar Murray Friedman (z”l), AJC Philadelphia/Southern New Jersey’s Regional Director for more than 40 years.

 Questions? Please contact Hilary Levine, AJC Associate Director, at levineh@ajc.org.