While human rights are generally conceived as a counter-hegemonic instrument for righting historical injustices, they have also been deployed to further subjugate the weak and legitimize violence. Using Israel/Palestine as a case study, Neve Gordon analyzes the increasing appropriations of human rights by security agencies, settler organizations, and extreme right nationalists, while underscoring how political actors advocating repression and abuse frequently invoke the language of human rights. Human rights, on the one hand, have become the lingua franca of global moral speak, while on the other, they have been reconstrued as a tool for enhancing domination. Gordon will conclude the talk by asking what remains of human rights after their appropriation by right wing political projects, and offer suggestions on how to liberate human rights so that they can become a weapon of emancipation in the age of Trump.
Neve Gordon is a Leverhulme visiting professor at SOAS, University of London, and a professor of politics at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. His research focuses on international law, human rights, the ethics of violence, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gordon is the author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press 2008), co-author (with Nicola Perugini) of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press 2015), and the editor of two volumes on human rights. He has also published many academic articles and book chapters and has written for an array of media outlets, including The Nation, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He is currently working on a new book project dealing with the history and politics of human shields.
Dr Hedi Viterbo is a lecturer in law at the University of Essex. His research examines legal issues concerning state violence, childhood, and sexuality from an interdisciplinary and increasingly global perspective. His co-authored book (with Orna Ben-Naftali and Michael Sfard), 'The ABC of the OPT: A Legal Lexicon of the Israeli Control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory', will be published by Cambridge University Press next year.
