Geneva was the site of Leary's formative years as a human rights scholar and activist; it is where she completed her docteur es sciences politiques degree in 1980; and it is where she has directed the UB law school's Geneva Internship Program, which ultimately grew to embrace all student interns stationed in Geneva.

"Geneva's a wonderful place," Leary said, a week before returning there. Her office at the Human Rights Center was piled high with boxes of books and papers-her career at UB-awaiting export. "When I first went there I was very surprised because it's a little place. Much smaller than Buffalo.

"It's been a center for international life forever," Leary said. "When the League of Nations was started, they decided to have it in Geneva. Since the Congress of Vienna in 1850, Switzerland had been neutral. Also it had a vision that it wasn't linked to any particular side, so a lot of things have always gone to Geneva because of the concept that it's neutral.

"The International Labor Organization started there, then the United Nations when they took over from the League, the Red Cross, the United Nations European Office, the High Commissioner of Refugees, the World Health Organization, International Labor Organization, World Meteorological Organization, International Telecommunications.

"But those are all governmental. There are a lot of non-governmental organizations which have set up there because of these other organizations. So it's really the humanitarian and social side of the UN."

Throughout her career at UB, Leary returned to Geneva every summer. She began informally assisting international law and human rights student interns. "I noticed a lot of interns sort of lost there," she explains. "There were interns from different countries and the United States, and I thought there should be a program for them so they could get to know each other and get to know the different international organizations. Then I thought it would be nice if our students could get to go there." Thus, with thanks to a grant from the Ford Foundation, began UB's Geneva Internship Program in 1989.

"I thought that internships should be carefully organized. If I was there I could see that the placements were good; if there were any problems I could move the students. I ran a weekly seminar not just for our students, but for all the students who were there, and about 70 or 80 came each week."

Leary's personal history includes a great deal of intensive scholarship as well as wide-ranging experience. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Utah, she entered law school at the University of Chicago. Later, after spending three years at 'a big Chicago firm,' in the early 1950s, Leary began to pursue her interest in international issues by taking an administrative position with the Intercultural Cooperation Association, an international women's organization, which led to an appointment at its headquarters in Geneva.

"When I got to Europe, I realized that I missed the law. I finally discovered that there was such a thing as international law. So I quit and went back to get a doctorate in international law. When I did that, I did it with the intention of teaching, always, but with the intention of specializing in human rights or in development issues because I was not interested in international tax, I wasn't interested in international business transactions, but I was very interested in human rights."

Leary's extensive body of work includes the text International Labor Conventions and International Law, numerous book chapters and articles on international law and human rights, and missions to Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Pakistan on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists and Amnesty International. She has taught in Toronto, Saskatchewan, and San Francisco. In 1993 she was named a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor.

The greatest human rights problem facing the world today, according to Leary, is "Ethnic disagreements. We don't have many wars between countries these days, we have them within countries. In Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, the former USSR, everywhere."

Modern ethnic conflicts are not limited to those that are in the headlines, like the former Yugoslavia or Ireland. One of the worst ongoing conflicts is occurring off the southeast coast of India in Sri Lanka, according to Leary. "There are two groups, the Tamils and the Sinhalese. The Sinhalese are about 80 percent and the Tamils about 20 percent. The Tamils are claiming an area in the north as a homeland and feel that they have been mistreated for years. They're kind of a liberation group, and have been fighting and they're still fighting. It's been going on for 12 years.

"A lot of the things are happening in the United States. I was in California a few months ago and the attitude toward the immigrants there is very, very strong, and we have our own racial problems. So far they're not as serious as in a lot of countries. But they are problems."

One consequence of the much-publicized 'conservatization of America' may be a general lessening of involvement in international human rights affairs, Leary says. "I think there's a lot of things that we could do to assist problems around the world that don't mean sending forces necessarily.

"I've been very impressed by Scandinavian countries and by the Dutch, by a lot of things they're doing in the way of human rights. The Norwegians, for instance, helped negotiate the Arab-Israeli peace agreement because they maintained a certain neutrality; now, that can only be done by a small country.

"We actually give an extremely low percentage of our funds for humanitarian purposes. We think we give a lot, but we give much less proportionally than the Scandinavian countries. And there's a lot of human rights centers at the UN that need extra funding. The United States could give to that.

"In sending troops, we should be very cautious, and only do so under multilateral auspices. You do have to think about what we're getting into and why and so on; on the other hand, we belong to the United Nations and we can't simply say we just regard our own interests. We have a certain responsibility that is over and above that of just our own sheer interests."

Another important problem, and the subject of Dr. Leary's forthcoming The Right to Health, is the future of health care in America.

"Under international human rights law, there is a concept of economic and social rights. They have been accepted by almost all the countries of the world. There's a right to housing, a right to education, and there's what they call a right to health.

"In the United States, we find it very hard to think of a right to health or a right to education or a right to housing. We're almost unique in that-certainly among the industrialized countries. Generally, other countries think of those things as rights, and certainly in international law they are rights.

"When you say there is a right to health, what does that mean? It doesn't mean that every single person has the right to a dialysis treatment or that everybody could be guaranteed good health. But we have other phrases; for instance, we talk about the right to property. Well, does that mean everybody has the right to be given a house? It just means the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of your property. So the 'right to health' concept is new, and it sounds strange to people because they've never heard it very much. So what we have to do is try to develop what it means, and that's what I'm trying to do.

"For instance, I think it does mean there should not be discrimination in the allocation of health care. Now if you look at the U.S., there is such a huge number of people who don't have health insurance, and certainly they are the poorer, and, I think I can say without a doubt, there are certain ethnic groups that have less care. Certainly, there should be some basic minimum that everybody gets. Now, what that minimum is has to be worked out. But the situation in the United States where some people do not have any at all is contrary to what my concept of the right to health care is.

"Canada spends less on health care than we do, as far as administrative costs are concerned. Their system is very good. It's supported and paid for by the government, but, in fact, you choose your own doctors. It's a better system, I think, than what we have here in the sense that we're being pushed more and more into managed care where you don't choose your own doctors.

Where, then, did the Clintons go wrong in attempting to launch their national health care system last year?

"I think theirs was so complex that even those of us who were in favor of universal care didn't understand it and we found it confusing," said Leary, "And so we sort of gave up."

Leary can take great satisfaction from her many noteworthy accomplishments throughout her tenure at UB-accomplishments that will be her legacy to the university.

"Together with Claude Welch in the Political Science Department, we did set up the Human Rights Center," she said. "I think we've done a creditable job of trying to encourage students who were interested in human rights to go on for careers. We have several people who are in careers now in human rights. We've gotten people to go to Geneva to learn more about human rights and international law. And the Human Rights Center has been very active; we've had a lot of student involvement and we're beginning to get more faculty involvement. So, to me, I guess that's the thing that I'm most happy about."

Claude Welch, Leary's co-founder of the UB Human Rights Center and fellow Distinguished Service Professor, says, "Professor Leary is unique in her combination of global knowledge and local application. Through her many years of experience in Geneva, Professor Leary knew almost all the world's major advocates of human rights. She was thus a human bridge between the academic world and the activist world, with profound knowledge of both."