Moral Universalism, Interventionism, and Human Rights as Politics

Justice Matters

"One of the great virtues of human rights is that it's very alert to the dark side of human nature. All the human rights covenants are a systematic inventory of all the horrible things that human beings can and have done to each other. I respect human rights for their moral realism, and I want human rights that are very realistic in their conception of human capacities and propensities." In this episode of Justice Matters, co-host Mathias Risse talks with Michael Ignatieff, former president of the Central European University and founding director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He is an author, academic, and former politician who served as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Together, Risse and Ignatieff discuss the state of human rights in the world today, Hungary under the leadership of Victor Orbán, and revisited topics from Ignatieff's Tanner Lecture series—given at the turn of the 21st century—including the politics of human rights, moral universalism, and American exceptionalism.