The dismissal of Professor Steven Salaita is a wake up call as to the limits imposed on "diverse" debate within our commercialised universities.
The ECHR still struggles to reconcile effective rights with the deep structures of a market economy.
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Human rights discourse relies on an abstracted human who is too often male and white. The challenge is to develop a human rights politics that is inclusive without obliterating differences.
Liberal relativism that celebrates civil and political rights is a neo-colonial construct which should be understood as such. What we see is really competing relativisms prioritised by the whims of private and public donors.
From within the liberal imaginary, human rights appear to be something that ‘we cannot not want’, even though they cannot give us what we want.
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Universities no longer function to ameliorate social status and inequality, but are part of a renewed patrimonial capitalism; the private benefits of higher education to its graduate beneficiaries are today used to justify the removal of public
The rights-bearing individual emancipated us from feudal absolutism in Europe. But that historical moment has passed with empire, and has the language of rights now lost its relevance?
Latin American constitutions are exemplary in going beyond liberalism in the way they formulate human rights. But they are at the same time illiberal in the powers they afford the executive to limit political freedoms.
