The first Food for Thought of the semester will be Friday, March 4th from 12-1PM. Join Professor Christov in the UHP Townhouse Club Room to discuss “Self-Determination” over a UHP-provided lunch. To reserve your spot (and your lunch!) RSVP here
Title: Who is the ‘Self’ in Self-Determination?
Synopsis:
How did the self-determination of a people and nation building come to be seen as virtually synonymous? The talk shows how the very concept of self-determination, on which anticolonial nationalism and declarations of independence are based, underwent an extraordinary transformation from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. Untangling the diverse, and contradictory, meanings of self-determination reveals the troubled—and lost—history of the most basic principle of our own political existence. It puts into question our common celebration of human rights and asks anew who “the people” is and by what criteria they should be constituted.
