Human Rights and the Carceral State

We are honored to welcome Charles F. Walker, distinguished professor of history, University of California, Davis, as the Spring 2026 Neilson Professor. On February 5, he will deliver titled, "Human Rights and the Carceral State: Peru's Experience of Political Violence."

On March 2, 1982, the Maoist guerrilla movement the Shining Path stormed the Ayacucho jail in the Peruvian Andes and freed approximately 90 of their comrades and 160 common prisoners. Hours later, the humiliated police took revenge by murdering three Shining Path suspects who were convalescing in the nearby hospital. Among the many repercussions of this shocking evening, the subject of the book that the Spring 2026 Neilson Professor Charles Walker has just finished, was the Peruvian government's decision to streamline the construction of modern penitentiaries and the renovation of dozens of jails. 

In this talk, Professor Walker seeks to link these events with the global phenomenon of the carceral state. Since the late 20th century, governments across the globe have incarcerated a growing percentage of the population, using harsh (and expensive) penitentiaries to isolate these prisoners from society. Critics have pointed out the biases in who is imprisoned in these penitentiaries as well as the corruption behind their construction and maintenance. In the United States, race plays a major role. Professor Walker strives to link this "night that changed Peru" with this expansion of the punitive and vigilant state. 

Charles Walker

Charles Walker, distinguished professor of history, University of California, Davis, is a leading scholar of Latin America, the Andes, and Peru, whose work in the fields of colonialism, environmental history, and human rights has placed him at the forefront of the historical discipline over the last two decades. He directed the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at UC Davis for over a decade and was also the director of Global Centers for Latin America & the Caribbean (Global Affairs). He held the MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair in International Human Rights from 2015-2020. He has published widely on Peruvian history, truth commissions, and historiography, in English and Spanish. His 2014 Harvard University Press book, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, was named one of the best books of the year by the Financial Times and also won the Hundley Prize from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. His Witness to the Age of Revolution has won awards in the United States and Peru and has been translated into Spanish and Quechua. 

Neilson Professorship

The Neilson Professorship was established in honor of the college’s third president to enable the college to have eminent scholars or artists whose work has broad intellectual appeal visit the community and share their current research with faculty and students.

Professor Walker's second lecture will be "The Shining Path (1980-2000) and the Long Shadow of Violence in Peru: Reconsiderations on Militancy, Resistance, and Terrorism," on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 5 p.m in the Klingenstein Browsing Room. Provost reception immediately following in the Skyline Reading Room.