On 10/29 from 12-1pm, Prof. Sebastian Wogenstein, together with Co-Director of The Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium Prof. Shareen Hertel, is hosting Dr. Michael Goodheart who discusses his upcoming book Emancipating Human Rights. He examines the complex and often contradictory role of human rights in political struggles, arguing that their emancipatory potential lies not in what human rights are, but in how people use them to pursue transformative social and political change.
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About the Book
Emancipating Human Rights is a forthcoming book by Dr. Michael Goodhart that cuts through the enduring confusion surrounding the emancipatory potential of human rights. It begins with the unsettling observation that while many activists around the world frame and pursue emancipatory goals in the conceptual vocabulary of human rights, scholars remain deeply divided about whether human rights can really deliver. The book reconceptualizes the problem by focusing not on what human rights are but instead on how people use them. It provides a radically new way of making sense of human rights that can accommodate their seemingly contradictory character and indeterminate politics by focusing on the politics people make with them. This approach shows that human rights can be used in many different and contradictory ways, emancipatory and otherwise.
About the Speaker
Michael Goodhart is Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. He is also Professor (by courtesy) of Philosophy and of Public and International Affairs. Goodhart’s core research interests include democracy, human rights, (in)justice, and emancipatory political struggles. He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow, a fellow in residence of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and Guest Professor in the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin.
Michael Goodhart is Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies. He is also Professor (by courtesy) of Philosophy and of Public and International Affairs. Goodhart’s core research interests include democracy, human rights, (in)justice, and emancipatory political struggles. He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow, a fellow in residence of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and Guest Professor in the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin.
Goodhart is the author of Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World (Oxford 2018), Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization (Routledge, 2005), contributing editor of Human Rights: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2009, 2012, 2016, 2022), and contributing co-editor of Social Movements and World-System Transformation (Routledge 2017) and Human Rights in the 21st Century: Continuity and Change since 9/11 (Palgrave, 2011). He is also author of numerous articles and book chapters and has lectured widely in North America and around the world. His current book project, Emancipating Human Rights, is nearing completion.
Moderators
Ilonka Oszvald, American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Shareen Hertel, University of Connecticut
Sebastian Wogenstein, University of Connecticut
