Cultural relativism and harmful cultural practices

Last week, at least a few of my stu­dents essen­tially argued that they didn’t believe there was any such thing as a uni­ver­sal human right. “Human rights are cul­tur­ally con­tin­gent,” said one.The ques­tion I think I want to ask today is about...

How Rich Breeders Changed the World”

Ross Gittins is a great writer who I relied on extens­ively in high school to explain com­plex eco­nom­ics. His latest art­icle in the SMH is on a fas­cin­at­ing book by Gregory Clark, a pro­fessor of eco­nom­ics at the Uni­ver­sity of...

Life begins at 0, apparently

Via vari­ous people: Crazy US right-wing moral major­ity try to redefine abor­tion to include any con­tra­cep­tion that pre­vents a fer­til­ised ovum from implant­ing in the uter­ine wall. Agh, please don’t let this go through. Come on Obama, get your­self...

Women’s rights are human rights

How and to what extent can women’s interests be advanced through human rights theory and act­iv­ism? This is a ques­tion near and dear to me. I have been involved with Amnesty Inter­na­tional for many, many years, writ­ing let­ters from a young age,...

Gendering International Politics

I start tutor­ing for Sheila Jef­freys today in Inter­na­tional Gender Polit­ics at Mel­bourne Uni­ver­sity. I thought it might be an inter­est­ing exer­cise to blog my thoughts on the lec­tures and some notes towards my ideas that I’ll explore in the tutes. If...