Events
Lecture by Seth Kaplan: How can human rights succeed in a multipolar era?
Growing multipolarity and political polarization have made human rights increasingly controversial—threatening their hard-won legitimacy. Closely examining how the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights overcame challenges remarkably similar to that faced by the movement today shows that a new framework can bridge the growing conflicts over rights: a flexible universalism that returns to basics—focusing on the great evils of the human condition.
Dr. Seth Kaplan is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), and consultant to organizations such as the World Bank, USAID, State Department, and OECD. He is the author of books such as Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict and Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development. His most recent book will appear in October 2018 with Cambridge University Press and is called Human Rights in Thick and Thin Societies: Universality without Uniformity.