New Books in Human Rights

Hong Kong in 2019 was a city on fire. Anti-government protests, sparked by an ill-fated extradition bill sparked seven months of protest and civil unrest. Protestors clashed with police in the streets, in shopping malls, in residential buildings. Driven by Hong Kong’s young people with their ‘Be Water!’ strategy, the pro-democracy movement grew into a massive force, receiving support from all demographics – from the ‘silver-hairs’, to mothers, from healthcare workers, to journalists and bankers, the ongoing protests polarized the community and changed the urban city space, likely forever.In City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong (Scribe, 2020), Antony Dapiran builds on his previous work City of Protest. He explores the 2019 protest movement, how it has changed the city and what Hong Kong means for the world. Dapiran gets you as close to the action as you can be, without having to experience the direct effects of being tear-gassed. This is a must read for anyone interested Hong Kong, China, democracy and human rights. It is a lesson in policing, in protest, and the power of political mobilization. It is a page turner that is essential to understanding Hong Kong’s ‘revolution of our times.’Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality and criminal law. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong protests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consenting adults. However, support for transgender individuals lags far behind; a significant majority of Americans do not support the right of transgender people to be free from discrimination in housing, employment, public spaces, health care, legal documents, and other areas. Much of this is due to deeply entrenched ideas about the definition of gender, perceptions that transgender people are not "real" or are suffering from mental illness, and fears that extending rights to transgender people will come at the expense of the rights of others. So how do you get people to rethink their prejudices?In their book Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights (Oxford University Press, 2020), Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison examine what tactics are effective in changing public opinion regarding transgender people. The result is a new approach that they call Identity Reassurance Theory. The idea is that individuals need to feel confident in their own identity before they can embrace a stigmatized group like transgender people, and that support of members of an outgroup can be encouraged by affirming the self-esteem of those targeted for attitude change. Michelson and Harrison, through their experiments, show that the most effective messaging on transgender issues meets people where they are, acknowledges their discomfort without judgment or criticism, and helps them to think about transgender people and rights in a way that aligns with their view of themselves as moral human beings.In this interview, Dr. Michelson, Dr. Harrison, and I discuss common issues faced by transgender people, and the ideologies that contribute to anti-transgender discrimination. We then discuss three of the nine experiments conducted by Michelson and Harrison that provide empirical evidence to support the claims in their book. Lastly, we discuss potential ways to change discriminatory beliefs towards transgender people. I recommend this book for people interested in public opinion, social psychology, and LGBTQ issues.Dr. Melissa R. Michelson (@profmichelson) is Professor of Political Science at Menlo College. Dr. Brian F. Harrison is a Lecturer at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Founder and President of Voters for Equality.Krystina Millar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include gender, sociology of the body, and sexuality. You can find her on Twitter at @KrystinaMillar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Never again!” This was the rallying cry, seemingly universal and unanimous, among liberal nation-states as they formed the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and later signed the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Emerging from the ashes of a global war that took some 60 million lives, and after witnessing the atrocities of Nazi Germany, a worldwide community appeared resolute in its commitment to not only condemn, but to also strive to prevent future “crimes against humanity.”In The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America (Oxford University Press, 2017), María Cristina García evaluates how the end of the Cold War brought new and unanticipated challenges to upholding this commitment from 1989 to the present. Through nine case studies that examine the central actors, debates, policies, and conflicts that have shaped the U.S. response to humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era, Dr. García explains the tensions that exist between different branches of government, the increasing importance of advocacy work by the humanitarian community, and the emergence of a deeply complicated asylum bureaucracy. Weighing the competing forces of fear and advocacy, García skillfully demonstrates the obsoleteness of the current definition of “refugee” in US statute. In its place, she argues for historically informed policies that address the realities of displacement in today’s world.David-James Gonzales (DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics. Follow him on Twitter @djgonzoPhD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Incivility in our public discourse is limiting our ability to get things done as a nation and preventing us from expressing ourselves in workplaces and classrooms for fear of offending those with real or imagined historical grievances or even merely strongly held views. If you agree with that, then Adam J. MacLeod’s book The Age of Selfies: Reasoning About Rights When the Stakes Are Personal (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) is the book for you. Alternatively, if you think such fears are overblown and just a nefarious argument advanced by a self-serving elite to justify a return to establishment rule this is likewise the book for you. Why both audiences? Because this important volume is all about how to go about thinking and reasoning and the role morality plays in those processes.In his book, MacLeod argues that due to the decline in moral education young people he dubs “selfies” have entered academia and the workplace without moral cores and are so riven with narcissism and a sense of entitlement that they are unable to think of the common good and are quick to take umbrage at any sort of questioning of their own personal preferences.According to MacLeod, a return to a larger place for openly moral arguments will enrich American life and enhance governance. To MacLeod, the misguided view of past decades that morality should play no part in policy making and that strict neutrality should be observed in the public square has only resulted in an acrimony-generating impoverishment of ideas and options. He suggests that the legal and philosophical concept of natural law can heal the ailing body politic and help soften divisions--or at least clarify, in a civilized way, what is at stake.In short, he wants us to learn how to “disagree well.” Give a listen.Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In China, roughly 60% of GDP and 80% of employment comes from the private sector – yet half of private entrepreneurs report that they faced expropriation of property by local governments. Yue Hou’s rich, detailed, and ambitious book documents how private entrepreneurs protect their property from expropriation by running for office – and using their public roles to advance their private economic interest. Entrepreneurs who hold local legislative seats can leverage their political status to deter predatory behavior by lower-level bureaucrats who fear retribution or punishment from the legislator’s political network. Joining local legislatures allows private owners to creatively build a system of selective – yet effective – property rights in the short (and maybe medium) term.Hou’s research combines quantitative and qualitative methods including interviews with entrepreneurs, legislators, and audit experiments – in a political environment in which people are often risk-averse and politically sensitive. The book lays out the logic of selective property rights within authoritarian regimes, explores what entrepreneurs do once they hold legislative office, and how effective this strategy is for securing property rights (spoiler, it is effective).The podcast concludes with Hou’s describing how private entrepreneurs have provided crisis relief for COVID-19 in China.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her latest book, In Search of Criminal Responsibility: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions (Oxford University Press, 2016), Nicola Lacey brings together philosophical, historical and socio-legal methods to give an account of the ever changing notion of responsibility in criminal law. She distinguishes between ideas of responsibility, which she argues are founded in notions of character, psychological capacity, the causation of harmful outcomes and the presentation of risk. The book draws links between these ideas of responsibility; of the institutions that produce them, and the interests that have shaped both doctrines and institutions.In her analysis of responsibility over time, Nicola demonstrates the functions that criminal law and punishment have been required to perform at different periods in history. Criminal law has moved from notions of character and outcome responsibility in the eighteenth century, through a period dominated by capacity responsibility, which has become established as central in criminal law. More recently, character responsibility is remerging, in combination with a new discourse that is founded in risk.In this discussion, as in her book, Nicola Lacey builds on her previous analysis in Women, Crime and Character (2008) and traces how the criminal law and the notion of responsibility has been gendered throughout history. Responsibility is contextualized in its role as to how it provides legitimation of state power, and also in its role for coordination of social behavior. Responsibility, and the criminal law more broadly, is historically, socially and politically contextualized in terms of practices of criminalization and the social functions that law plays.Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality and criminal law. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong protests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reporters and scholars often focus on violence and victimization: “if it bleeds, it leads.” But unarmed civilians around the world often protect themselves against armed combatants using social processes to reduce the violence perpetrated against them. Oliver Kaplan’s case studies of Columbia – with extensions to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and the Philippines – demonstrates how, why, and when civilians effectively resist the influence of armed actors and limit violence.In our conversation about his new book Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Kaplan describes his interdisciplinary methodology that creatively combines fieldwork, statistics, and scholarship from sociology, psychology, history, and political science. Kaplan insists that civilians are not helpless victims but deployers of covert and overt nonviolence strategies that preserve and cultivate autonomy. He explains how local social organization and cohesion allows civilians to create strategies that help them protect themselves (and human rights more broadly). Kaplan’s book traces the strategies that help civilians enhance their autonomy – particularly the ways in which they affect armed actors’ behavior, capabilities, and ways of thinking. The book contributes to the study of human rights, conflict processes, peace studies, and order in weak states.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The right to decision making is important for all people. It allows us to choose how to we our lives – both on a daily basis, and also in terms of how we wish to express ourselves, to live in accordance with our values and desires.However, the right to make decisions has been, and continues to be, routinely denied to people with disabilities – sometimes by family members and carers, or by institutions and courts.In this conversation, Anna Arstein-Kerslake discusses situations where people with cognitive impairments are unjustifiably denied the right to make their own choices. She shares her own experiences to demonstrate how this unjustifiably and unnecessarily discriminates against people with disabilities.But it need not be this way; both in Restoring Voice to the People with Cognitive Disabilities (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and in this episode, Anna takes us through examples of how bringing greater equality for people with cognitive impairments can be of benefit to the entire community. Her book provides a roadmap for the future to bring greater equality for all.Jane Richards is a doctoral candidate in Human Rights Law at the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include disability, equality and criminal law. You can find her on twitter @JaneRichardsHK where she avidly follows the Hong Kong protests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After the Second World War, an Australian diplomat was one of eight people to draft the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. And in the years that followed, Australians of many different stripes—including activists fighting for Aboriginal rights and women’s rights, communists, and even anticommunists—invoked human rights in their respective political struggles. Yet, despite these Australians’ embrace of human rights, the Australian government didn’t sign the Declaration of Human Rights until 1972, and then it took even longer to ratify it.Australia’s ambiguous relationship with human rights is precisely what Jon Piccini untangles in his fascinating, deeply researched book, Human Rights in Twentieth-Century Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2019). By exploring these many different groups’ invocation of human rights, Piccini, a faculty member at the Australian Catholic University, is able to show how ideas and language can circulate even across ideological divisions. This book should be read by those interested in the global history of ideas and human rights, Australian political and social historians, along with those like me, who know little about Australia but would like to learn a lot more.Dexter Fergie is a PhD student of US and global history at Northwestern University. He is currently researching the 20th century geopolitical history of information and communications networks. He can be reached by email at dexter.fergie@u.northwestern.edu or on Twitter @DexterFergie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite the post-Holocaust UN convention to ensure the protection of minority communities globally, the International community has failed to notice the signs of the Rohingya genocide, but what stopped them from taking subsequent action so long after the atrocity? Who really were responsible? And what impact do the continuing campaigns by the displaced Rohingya and international civil society have?Dr. Simon Adams, Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, explores these and other questions in his recent paper “The Responsibility to Protect and the Fate of the Rohingya”, published in Brill’s Global Responsibility to Protect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices