The 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.
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).
