The 8th Wittrock Lecture: "Human Rights and Resurgent Fascism" + panel discussion
- Date
- 12 February 2026, 14:15–18:30
- Location
- SCAS, Thunberg Lecture Hall, Linneanum, Villavägen 6c, Uppsala
- Type
- Lecture
- Lecturer
- Michael Goodhart
- Web page
- https://www.swedishcollegium.se/
- Organiser
- Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS)
- Contact person
- Mattias Bolkéus Blom
Professor Michael Goodhart (University of Pittsburgh) will give the 2026 Wittrock Lecture on the topic "Human Rights and Resurgent Fascism". The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion on ”Liberatory Futures? Strategies for Human Rights and Democratic Renewal" and a reception. Panellists: Navnita Chadha Behera, Michael Goodhart, Elena Namli & Stefan Svallfors.
Pre-registration via the SCAS website is required.
The lecture is a hybrid event - see the webpage for the Zoom link.
ABSTRACT:
The revival of fascism across the world today capitalizes on the failure of liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights as programs for human liberation. Fascists make that failure the foundation of their chauvinistic and repressive politics of patriarchal ethno-nationalism. Liberals’ efforts to defend these failed paradigms only highlight their inadequacies, strengthening fascism’s popular appeal. Does this mean that democracy and human rights are exhausted? To answer that question requires clarity about how and why liberal democracy and cosmopolitan human rights failed: only with such clarity can we identify and cultivate alternative practices whose emancipatory promise offers a bulwark against the tide of resurgent fascism.