Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh

The revival of fascism across the world today capitalizes on the failure of liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights as programs for human liberation. Fascists make that failure the foundation of their chauvinistic and repressive politics of patriarchal ethno-nationalism. Liberals’ efforts to defend these failed paradigms only highlight their inadequacies, strengthening fascism’s popular appeal. Does this mean that democracy and human rights are exhausted? To answer that question requires clarity about how and why liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights failed: only with such clarity can we identify and cultivate alternative practices whose emancipatory promise offers a bulwark against the tide of resurgent fascism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Michael Goodhart is Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of Pittsburgh; he is also Professor (by courtesy) of Philosophy. From 2017-2021 he directed the University's Global Studies Center. In AY 2021-22, he was a Fellow in residence at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study; he is a past Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow (2008-09) and was Guest Professor in the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (2008-10). His research on human rights, injustice, democratic theory, and emancipatory politics has been published by leading presses and journals in the field. He is completing work on a new book, tentatively entitled The Enigma of Human Rights.

PANEL DISCUSSION -
Liberatory Futures? Strategies for Human Rights and Democratic Renewal

Navnita Chadha Behera, Michael Goodhart, Elena Namli & Stefan Svallfors

The panel examines the notion of liberatory futures, with a focus on the structural conditions and institutional dynamics shaping human rights and democratic renewal. It invites critical reflection on how contemporary configurations of power, governance, and political participation constrain or enable transformative possibilities beyond existing liberal-democratic paradigms. Panelists will offer a variety of disciplinary perspectives on the possibilities and limitations of liberatory strategies for political renewal amid fascistic resurgence. The discussion aims to advance scholarly understanding of how alternative democratic imaginaries and rights-based frameworks may contribute to more inclusive and resilient political orders.

Panellists:

Moderators:

The lecture and panel discussion will be followed a reception.