Human Rights

A Turning Point in Israel

The government’s new Nation State Law codifies prejudice, but therein lies a silver lining.

  • Odeh Bisharat
with responses from
  • Hannah Pollin-Galay

What Are Human Rights Good For?

Global justice requires that we look away from Geneva and New York to the outer fringes of global power.

  • Mark Goodale

Bloody Gina

Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing is later this week. Here’s why we should all be concerned.

  • Scott Casleton

The Burden of Being Good

That the United States wields its power benevolently is anything but clear from a Russian vantage point.

  • Michael Kimmage

Open for Business, Not Human Rights: Trump’s Priorities in Central America

A recent conference made it clear: military and corporate interests will prevail.

  • Lauren Carasik

Why Coretta Scott King Fought for a Job Guarantee

She saw economic precarity not just as a side effect of racial subjugation, but central to its functioning.

  • David Stein

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Refuge for Fugitives

We can learn from the surprising coalition of people who sheltered and rescued escaped slaves.

  • Stephen Kantrowitz

Do Outsiders Have Legal Rights?

Stayed or not, Trump's ban highlights the need for strong immigrant rights.

  • Adam Hosein

To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice

How the history of slavery prompts us to rethink our notion of justice.

  • Walter Johnson
with responses from
  • Donna Murch
  • Caitlin C. Rosenthal
  • Peter Linebaugh
  • Roberto Gargarella
  • Peter James Hudson
  • Manisha Sinha
  • Samuel Moyn
  • Stephanie Smallwood
  • Andrew Zimmerman
  • Peniel Joseph
  • N. D. B. Connolly

The Souls of White Folk

What can W. E. B. Du Bois and the black radical tradition tell us about Trump’s election and radical political action today?

  • Walter Johnson

Lost in Translation

Schools in Nepal increasingly use English as the language of instruction. But in the name of preparing them for a globalized world, non-mother-tongue education often fails the students it aims to help.

  • Eleanor Hildebrandt

Kashmir’s High Price for Demanding Independence

In the name of fighting radical Islam, Indian troops have gone to war with civilians.

  • Tariq Mir

On Ice

In U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities, the law’s reach is tenuous.

  • Colin Dayan

Will Peace Bring Justice to Colombia?

Will victims of the war be served by the call for restorative justice?

  • Lauren Carasik

What Does Black Lives Matter Want?

The ideas in the movement’s new manifesto would enrich our practice of democracy.

  • Robin D. G. Kelley

Blood in Honduras, Silence in the United States

The U.S. turns a blind eye on the murder of environmentalist Berta Cáceres.

  • Lauren Carasik

Queers Against Hate

Radical gay liberation laid the ground for the moderate legal gains of gay rights.

  • Michael Bronski

Waiting at Guantánamo

After fourteen years, Mohamedou Ould Slahi may finally have a chance at freedom.

  • Henry Ace Knight

Who’s to Blame in South Sudan?

The country needs a political rebirth.

  • Mahmood Mamdani

No Money and No Plan for Refugees

The UN’s World Humanitiarian Summit came up empty-handed.

  • Elizabeth Cullen Dunn

Orlando: What’s God Got to Do with It?

Suddenly conservatives want us to believe they care about homophobia.

  • Michael Bronski

Writing Human Rights and Getting It Wrong

The West likes morality plays with clear heroes and villains, in which we play the role of savior.

  • Alex de Waal

The Look of Disaster

Comic books can document the horrors of war better than photos.

  • Elizabeth Hand

Lola Ridge: The Radical Modernist We Won’t Forget Twice

The past-due revival of Lola Ridge: poet, editor, feminist, and political activist.

  • Terese Svoboda
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