Author Archives: Stephen Hopgood

About Stephen Hopgood

Stephen Hopgood is Professor of International Relations and Pro-Director (International) at SOAS University of London. He is the author of The Endtimes of Human Rights (Cornell University Press, 2013) named by the Guardian as one of the top ten books on international struggle. This follows on from his ethnography of Amnesty International, Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International (Cornell University Press, 2006), which won the American Political Science Association Best Book in Human Rights Award. His most recent article is “When the Music Stops: Humanitarianism in a post-Liberal World Order,” forthcoming in the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs.

Hopgood on Çubukçu, For the Love of Humanity

March 11, 2019 by
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This post is part of a symposium on Ayça Çubukçu’s book For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). All contributions to the symposium can be found here. Much as its liberal cosmopolitan advocates might wish otherwise, “human rights” are a floating signifier. Small libraries have been built on the effort to give “human rights” settled and permanent philosophical and legal meaning, as well as cultural and historical grounding in a variety of genealogies of moral progress, but Continue reading →

Peter Slezkine Round table: The Sword and the Cross

January 2, 2015 by
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This post is part of our round table on Peter Slezkine’s essay on the origins of Human Rights Watch from our recent issue. Please be sure to read other entries by Kenneth Roth, Aryeh Neier, Bart De Sutter, and the final response from the author. Peter Slezkine’s “From Helsinki to Human Rights Watch” tilts persuasively at a key myth beloved by human right advocates, that of the ineluctable unfolding of natural law (being “in league with the cosmos,” Thomas Jefferson called it). Actually how Human Rights Watch evolved was Continue reading →