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Righting Wrongs

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Date and time
Thursday, April 3, 2025
In-person:
Entrance is free but registration is required. Kenneth Roth will sign copies of his book after the presentation.

Under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch grew its staff to over 500 and was able to conduct investigations in 100 countries to uncover abuses and pressure offending governments to desist. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on its biggest offenders and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts.

Roth was the son of a Jewish butcher, who escaped Nazi Germany just before the war began. Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. His work took him all over the world to confront cruelty and injustice on its home turf. Roth arrived in Rwanda shortly after the Genocide; he scrutinized the impact of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and investigated and condemned Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. He directed efforts to curtail the Chinese government’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims, to bring Myanmar’s officials to justice after the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, to halt Russian war crimes in Ukraine, even to reign in the U.S. government. Roth’s strategies included the deployment of an ancient but powerful tool – “shaming” – and illustrates its surprising effectiveness.

His book is a chronicle of the ongoing global battle to redress injustice and tilt the scales toward good.

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Kenneth Roth is the former executive director of Human Rights Watch. His new book is Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. He has extensively investigated human rights abuses around the world, focusing on the world’s most dire situations, the pursuit of international justice and the tension between democracy and autocracy. He has written for NYT , The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and other major publications. He spends his time between NY and Geneva.
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Mathias Risse is Berthold Beitz Professor in Human Rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.
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