New Books in Human Rights

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with scholars of human rights about their new books
    New Books Network
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Art Literary History & Criticism Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences
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Episodes
  • Kenneth Roth, "Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments" (Knopf, 2025)

    Kenneth Roth, "Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments" (Knopf, 2025)
    Feb 15 2025
    For three decades, Kenneth Roth led Human Rights Watch, transforming it from a small advocacy group into one of the most influential human rights organizations in the world. In Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments (Knopf, 2025), he offers a gripping inside account of the relentless fight against some of the world’s most abusive governments—from war crimes in Syria and Russia’s authoritarianism to China’s crackdown on dissent and the global erosion of democratic norms. Part memoir, part strategic guide, and part call to action, Righting Wrongs reveals the behind-the-scenes battles to hold governments accountable, the difficult choices human rights activists must make, and the lessons learned from engaging with autocrats, diplomats, and international institutions. With keen insight, Roth shows how pressure and advocacy can curb abuses and spark change—even against the most powerful forces. A must-read for anyone passionate about justice, democracy, and global affairs, Righting Wrongs is both an inspiring chronicle of courage and a crucial roadmap for the challenges ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Alpa Shah, "The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India" (OR Books, 2024)

    Alpa Shah, "The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India" (OR Books, 2024)
    Feb 13 2025
    The Incarcerations: Bk-16 and the Search for Democracy in India (OR Books, 2024) pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story of the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists. Alpa Shah unravels how these alleged terrorists were charged with inciting violence at a year’s day commemoration in 2018, accused of waging a war against the Indian state, and plotting to kill the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Expertly leading us through the case, Shah exposes some of the world’s most shocking revelations of cyber warfare research, which show not only hacking of emails and mobile phones of the BK-16, but also implantation of the electronic evidence that was used to incarcerate them. Through the life histories of the BK-16, Shah dives deep into the issues they fought for and tells the story of India’s three main minorities – Adivasi, Dalits and Muslims – and what the search for democracy entails for them. Essential and urgent, The Incarcerations reveals how this case is a bellwether for the collapse of democracy in India, as for the first time in the nation’s history there is a multi-pronged, coordinated attack on key defenders of various pillars of democracy. In so doing, Shah shows that democracy today must be not only about protecting freedom of expression and democratic institutions, but also about supporting and safeguarding the social movements that question our global inequalities. About the Author: Alpa Shah is the Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford, with a Fellowship at All Souls College. She has written and presented for BBC Radio 4 Crossing Continents and From Our Own Correspondent. She is a twice-finalist for The Orwell Prize for Political Writing for her 2018 book Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas and her 2024 book The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India. About the Host: Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Feb 5 2025
    When World War II ended, about one million people whom the Soviet Union claimed as its citizens were outside the borders of the USSR, mostly in the Western-occupied zones of Germany and Austria. These “displaced persons,” or DPs—Russians, prewar Soviet citizens, and people from West Ukraine and the Baltic states forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1939—refused to repatriate to the Soviet Union despite its demands. Thus began one of the first big conflicts of the Cold War. In Lost Souls: Soviet Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War (2024), Sheila Fitzpatrick draws on new archival research, including Soviet interviews with hundreds of DPs, to offer a vivid account of this crisis, from the competitive maneuverings of politicians and diplomats to the everyday lives of DPs. American enthusiasm for funding the refugee organizations taking care of DPs quickly waned after the war. It was only after DPs were redefined—from “victims of war and Nazism” to “victims of Communism”—in 1947 that a solution was found: the United States would pay for the mass resettlement of DPs in America, Australia, and other countries outside Europe. The Soviet Union protested this “theft” of its citizens. But it was a coup for the United States. The choice of DPs to live a free life in the West, and the West’s welcome of them, became an important theme in America’s Cold War propaganda battle with the Soviet Union. A compelling story of the early Cold War, Lost Souls is also a rare chronicle of a refugee crisis that was solved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 5 mins

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