The talk, sponsored by the campus chapter of Amnesty International, is open to the public at no charge.

Rubenstein’s talk is titled The Death Penalty: Is It Really a Human Rights Issue or Just Another Government Program? He’ll examine the death penalty as a challenge to both advocates and opponents of capital punishment, the risks of condemning innocent prisoners and the possibility of its abolition in the United States.

Rubenstein has been a staff member of Amnesty International USA since 1975. As Northeast regional director, he supervises Amnesty membership in New England, New York and New Jersey. He has testified against the death penalty before state legislatures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Rubenstein is an associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of Soviet Dissidents: Their Struggle for Human Rights (Beacon Press, 1980); Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg (Basic Books, 1996); and, with Vladimir Naumov, is co-editor of Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Yale University Press, in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; 2001).

Ayers is the force behind Porters’ Progress, a non-profit organization that provides empowering education and apparel suitable to harsh Himalyan conditions to mountain porters in Nepal. Bates is one stop on a U.S.-Canadian tour that Ayers is making with his 90-minute presentation, which includes a slide show and the award-winning BBC documentary Carrying the Burden, a 2001 Banff Mountain Film Festival selection.

A creative writing major at Bates, Ayers spent a junior semester in Nepal. In that country known for stunning natural beauty and harsh poverty, he started working with the porters who accompany tourist treks in the Himalayas. Moved by the hardships that these hardy and hardworking people endure, he founded Porters’ Progress after graduation.

Not to be confused with the Sherpas famed for their role in newsmaking mountain climbs, the porters that Ayers supports are typically lowland farmers who augment a subsistence living by carrying luggage for tourist treks. In thin clothes and flimsy shoes, they spend weeks at high altitudes carrying up to 250 pounds. Their cargo baskets are strapped to their foreheads with a cord that distributes weight to the spine.

“There’s a certain brilliance to them,” Ayers says, “that I was amazed at in the face of such hardship.”

Ayers’ presentation is sponsored by the New World Coalition, the Anti-Sweatshop Coalition and Amnesty International.