INTERVIEW
NEW FRONTIERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS SCHOLARSHIP INTERVIEW WITH ANTHONY CHASE, PROFESSOR, DIPLOMACY AND WORLD AFFAIRS, OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE by Lisa Haagensen
LISA HAAGENSEN:
What is the most important new development in human rights scholarship?
ANTHONY CHASE:
First, that such a scholarship exists: there’s a tradition of human rights as being separate from scholarship, something to be commented upon, but not that there be a human rights scholarship in and of itself. I think that’s developed in the last few years. Previously, that really only existed within law and within international relations, but I think increasingly there’s scholarship in any number of disciplines. Second, not just that a human rights scholarship exists, but that it exists in any number of disciplines. If you look at the literature that’s out there in history, in sociology, in anthropology even, a decade ago there wasn’t substantial work being done on human rights in those various disciplines. A third new development is not just multidisciplinarity but the increasing interdisciplinarity of human rights scholarship. This is the new frontier and, to me, is probably the most exciting place where human rights scholarship is going. Not just that human rights has integrated itself into any number of disciplines but that there is an increasing amount of conversation among and between those disciplines. Perhaps more specifically, the most interesting thing that’s coming out of human rights in academia is an increasing focus on human rights at the local level – i.e., how they come to be used as a tangible tool in the struggles of different groups in different parts of the world. This seems to be coming out of a spread of human rights into different disciplines and that many of those disciplines focus on how human rights have 2016 THE UNIVERSAL
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