A presentation by Michael Hanchard (University of Pennsylvania).
The majority of pundits and specialists on democratic erosion often ignore an uncomfortable fact: some clues to democracy’s demise can be glimpsed in its beginnings, in the unequal circumstances certain people inhabit within democratic polities, or in adjacent contexts. Social class, caste, enslavement, patriarchy, ethnic chauvinism, xenophobia and racism are all factors that help determine who benefits the most from the workings of democracy, and for whom voting can often be a hollow act. Thus, Trumpism, Modi, Meloni, and the Alternative for Germany are not the sources of the current democratic crisis, but rather symptomatic of a more fundamental desire present in both democratic and non-democratic polities: the attraction to a form of human homogeneity that Hanchard terms racial rule.
After his presentation, Michael Hanchard will take part in a discussion with Yusuf Serunkuma (Anthropologist and Postdoctoral Researcher at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), moderated by Violeta Moreno-Lax (Wübben Foundation Professor of International Law and Director of the Hertie School’s Centre for Fundamental Rights).
This event is part of the Distinguished Equality Lecture Series organised by the Social Policy Research Colloquium in collaboration with the Centre for Fundamental Rights and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Office.
This event is organised in collaboration with the Centre for Fundamental Rights.
Please register through the form. If you have any questions, please send an email to socialpolicygroup[at]hertie-school[dot]org.
Speaker
Michael Hanchard
Prof. Michael G. Hanchard, PhD is the Gustave C. Kuemmerle Professor in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs the Marginalized Populations Project. His research and teaching interests combine a specialization in comparative politics with an interest in contemporary political theory, encompassing themes of nationalism, racism, xenophobia and citizenship. His publications include Orpheus and Power: The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (Princeton, 1994), Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil, editor, (Duke, 1999), Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (Oxford, 2006) and most recently The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy (Princeton, 2018). The Spectre of Race received the Ralphe J. Bunche Award from the American Political Science Association in 2019 for the best book on ethnic and cultural pluralism, and was named one of the Ten Best Books in 2018 by the Times Educational Supplement in London.
Professor Hanchard received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in 1991, an M.A. in International Relations from the New School for Social Research in 1985, and an A.B. in International Relations from Tufts University in 1981. He has held visiting scholar positions at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University, Universitaria Candido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro and the Universidade de Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo (Brazil), the University of Cartagena (Colombia), the Instituto Gramsci in Milan, Italy, the University of Ghana, Legon (West Africa), the University of Vienna, Austria, and Sciences Po in Paris, France. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Macarthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was a member of the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2014-2015.
Prof. Hanchard was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
Yusuf Serunkuma
Dr Yusuf (Joseph) Serunkuma has a PhD in social and cultural anthropology from Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, and an MPhil in Social Studies from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Dr Serunkuma’s scholarly interests range from secessionist nationalism, critical decolonial studies/theory, political economy to popular culture, and governments. His most recent project, funded by VW, with co-researchers, Dr Stefanie Lammert (Humboldt) and Dr Serawit Debele (Bayreuth), focused on African Studies in Germany through the lens of critical race theory – and focused on the question of racial consciousness, seeing Black Germans, indigenous and other persons of color (BIPOC) especially in the ways in which African Studies is canonized and curated in Germany. Dr Serunkuma is also a playwright and his two plays (The Snake Farmers, and The Meat Festivals) are set-books for high schools in Uganda and Rwanda. Yusuf is the author of a new book on decolonisation/new colonialism: Surrounded: Democracy, Free Markets and Other Entrapments of New Colonialism, published in Kampala by Editor House Facility.
Moderator: Violeta Moreno-Lax
Prof. Violeta Moreno-Lax, PhD is the inaugural Wübben Foundation Professor of International Law and the Director of the Hertie School’s Centre for Fundamental Rights. Before joining the Hertie School, she was a Full Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London, where she served as founding Director of the (B)OrderS Centre for the Legal Study of Borders, Migration, and Displacement. Previously, she held the ICREA Research Professorship in International and European Law at the University of Barcelona. Moreno-Lax has published extensively in international and EU law at the intersection of border violence, global security, migration, and human rights. As a world-leading expert in these fields, she regularly consults for UN agencies, the EU institutions, and other organisations. Leading courts, including the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Belgian Conseil d’État have cited her work. She is also a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and a legal adviser and founding member of the de:border/ /migration justice collective, focusing on strategic litigation. She sits on the Editorial Boards of the European Journal of Migration and Law and the International Journal of Refugee Law.