Ethical Responses to the Refugee Crisis
Date & Time: Thursday, February 17th @ 5:00pm
Location: Zoom Webinar [event link]
Webinar ID: 925 2983 2404 Passcode: 254214
Event Description: In this talk, Dr Serena Parekh shows why it’s important to understand that there is not one but two global refugee crises. The first is the more well-known crisis faced by Western states who are asked to take in refugees and asylum seekers; they must balance their commitments to human rights with what they see as a need to protect their borders and sovereign right to decide who enters. The second crisis is the crisis faced by refugees themselves who are unable to find refuge anywhere in the world, that is, they are unable to access the minimum conditions of human dignity. Formulating a morally adequate refugee policy will require understanding both crises, especially the second, lesser-known crisis. Dr Serena Parekh shows why we should understand the global refugee crisis as a structural injustice and why this gives rise to a responsibility to address the crisis for refugees.
Attendance: You can register for this event in advance on Handshake here. You will not need to scan a QR code to check in to this event because it will be hosted on Zoom. Zoom will automatically track attendance. In order to earn credit for this event you must be present for the full event and you must be signed in to the Zoom with your BU account.
About Serena Parekh
Serena Parekh is a Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University in Boston, where she is the director of the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Program and co-editor of the journal, Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. She is the author of three books, including her most recent book, No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford 2020), which won the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award, the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award and was a finalist for the PROSE award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. Her other books include, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement (Routledge in 2017) and Hannah Arendt and the Challenge of Modernity: A Phenomenology of Human Rights (Routledge 2008), which was translated into Chinese. Her primary philosophical interests are in social and political philosophy, feminist theory, and continental philosophy. She has also published numerous articles on social and political philosophy in Hypatia, Philosophy and Social Criticism, and Human Rights Quarterly.