Author Event! Kenneth Roth's "Righting Wrongs"

Join us on April 30th at 4:30pm as we host Kenneth Roth, who be discussing his newest book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments. Joining Kenneth will be Professor Nina Tannenwald. Signed copies of the book are available for purchase via eventbrite and during the event.

About the book:

From the long-time head of Human Rights Watch, the fascinating and inspiring story of taking on the biggest villains and toughest autocrats around the world

In three decades under the leadership of Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch grew to a staff of more than 500, conducting investigations in 100 countries to uncover abuses—and pressuring offending governments to stop them. Roth has grappled with the worst of humanity, taken on the biggest villains of our time, and persuaded leaders from around the globe to stand up to their repressive counterparts.

The son of a Jew who fled Nazi Germany just before the war began, Roth grew up knowing full well how inhumane governments could be. He has traveled the world to meet cruelty and injustice on its home turf: he arrived in Rwanda shortly after the Genocide; scrutinized the impact of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait; 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 many innovations and strategies included the deployment of a concept as old as mankind—the powerful tool of “shaming”—and here he illustrates its surprising effectiveness against evildoers.

This is a story of wins, losses, and ongoing battles in the ceaseless fight to uphold our most basic values.

About the author:

Kenneth Roth is the former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He has extensively investigated human rights abuses around the world, focusing especially on the world’s most dire situations, the pursuit of international justice, the major powers’ foreign policies, the work of the UN, and the global contexts between democracy and autocracy. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, and other major publications. He spends his time between New York and Geneva.

About the moderator:

Nina Tannenwald is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Brown University in the USA. She is the former Director of the International Relations Program at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Her research focuses on the role of international institutions, norms and ideas in global security issues, efforts to control weapons of mass destruction, and human rights and the laws of war. Her book, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 was awarded the Lepgold Prize in 2009 for best book in international relations. In 2023, she served as Fulbright Visiting Professor of International Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.