Will Harris Be a 'Human Rights Hawk' or Just a Hawk?

Harris had almost nothing to say about this in her acceptance speech last week.

Paul Poast believes that Harris will be more of a “human rights hawk” than Trump or Biden:

Based on what she has said and done to this point in her political career, a Harris foreign policy would likely be more human rights-centered than that of either of her immediate predecessors.

Poast may be right that a Harris administration would give greater priority to human rights than the last two presidents, but as a candidate she hasn’t given us many reasons to expect it. The party’s Biden-centric platform offers very little beyond boilerplate rhetoric on these issues, and Harris had almost nothing to say about this in her acceptance speech last week. Harris mentioned defending American ideals and advancing American values, but practically every candidate has used similar language and then proceeded to govern without paying much attention to such things in practice. The phrase human rights never appears once in Harris’ speech. Maybe that is an accidental oversight, but it’s a strange thing to omit if the candidate is going to focus on these issues more than her predecessors.