Essay
The Global Liberal Arts Challenge
The democratic backsliding that has accelerated across the globe over the past decade has included a trend in education that has gone less noticed: a rollback of liberal arts and sciences (LAS) as a system of university education. Why is this system under attack? What are its future prospects?
Engines of Patriarchy: Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Times of Illiberal Backlash Politics
In recent years, concerns over the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) have mounted. In response, international organizations (IOs) have begun to translate the emerging consensus on the need for ethical AI into concrete international rules and standards. While the path toward effective AI governance faces many challenges, this essay shifts attention to an obstacle that has received little attention so far: the growing illiberal backlash in IOs.
COVID-19 as a Mass Death Event
In order to fully understand the politics arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to focus on the individual and collective experiences of death, loss, and grief. Crucially, centering the impact on experiences of death and grief may help us more clearly formulate the normative questions necessary to imagine better post-pandemic futures.
Finding Refuge through Employment: Worker Visas as a Complementary Pathway for Refugee Resettlement
This essay aims to identify and explore an underappreciated win-win policy option that has the potential to address both the needs of refugees for resettlement and the labor demand of destination countries. Building upon provisions of the Model International Mobility Convention, we explore how to scale up valuable measures for identifying job opportunities that can resettle refugees from asylum countries to destination countries.
Taking Measure of the UN’s Legacy at Seventy-Five
Founded on the visions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, the United Nations has evolved significantly over the past seventy-five years. It has registered remarkable achievements, stimulating a range of ambitious multilateral treaties; promoting human rights; and, at times, playing a central role in containing and preventing armed conflict, particularly in the avoidance of […]
Hypocritical Inhospitality: The Global Refugee Crisis in the Light of History
Political authorities often claim that states have an absolute right to decide for themselves who enters their territory and the conditions on which they enter by mere virtue of their sovereignty. In 2018, for example, the then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, responded to the UN’s criticism of the Donald Trump administration’s […]
The Ethics of Kin State Activism: A Cosmopolitan Defense
A notable feature of nationalism’s contemporary resurgence is the rise of “kin state activism.” This essay proposes a set of four cosmopolitan criteria that can enable us to recognize and combat the dangers posed by certain forms of kin state mobilization without forgoing the opportunities presented by other forms.
A Human Rights Approach to Conflict Resolution
The role of human rights abuses in the causes, dynamics, and consequences of conflict illustrate the importance of a human rights approach to conflict resolution: if human rights are part of the problem, they must be part of the solution.
