Human Rights

As American as Family Separation

Though the cruelties of the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy were unique, they were part of a long American tradition of taking children from their parents.

July 1, 2021 issue

Workers from a Koch Foods plant being taken away by ICE agents during a raid, Morton, Mississippi, August 7, 2019

Julia Preston

Deportation Nation

The deportation system held sway over immigrant communities long before Trump became president, but under his direction it has become even more far-reaching, arbitrary, and cruel.

October 8, 2020 issue

Nathan Whitlock

Where Health Care Is a Human Right

How does the single-payer system work in Canada, and does it need reform?

November 19, 2020 issue

Madeleine Schwartz

Criminalizing a Constitutional Right

For many Americans, Roe v. Wade might as well have been overturned already.

December 3, 2020 issue

David Luban

America the Unaccountable

The Trump administration has declared war on the International Criminal Court—the world’s only permanent court whose mandate is to pursue cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

August 20, 2020 issue

Police officers at the scene of a shooting on the North Side of Chicago, 2009

Peter C. Baker

A Legacy of Torture in Chicago

Laurence Ralph’s ‘The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence’

July 2, 2020 issue

Uighur detainees listening to a “deradicalization” presentation at a reeducation camp, in a photo posted to the Xinjiang Judicial Administration’s WeChat account, Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang, 2017

James Millward

‘Reeducating’ Xinjiang’s Muslims

A vast new gulag of “de-extremification training centers” has been created for Turkic Muslim inhabitants of Xinjiang

February 7, 2019 issue

Rafil Kroll-Zaidi

The Revival of Church Sanctuary

How a long-abandoned practice became a way for undocumented immigrants to seek protection.

November 19, 2020 issue

The Latest

Alma Guillermoprieto

Confrontation in Colombia

Protesters have demanded not just the rejection of a tax bill but a whole new society.

July 22, 2021 issue

Jill Filipovic

US Abortion Politics in Conflict Zones

From Rwanda and Bosnia to Myanmar and Tigray, rape is now recognized as a genocidal crime. Yet its survivors rarely receive the health care they need—thanks to America’s deadly culture war.

June 16, 2021

Sean Wilentz

Forging an Early Black Politics

The pre-Civil War North was a landscape not of unremitting white supremacy but of persistent struggles over racial justice by both Blacks and whites.

July 1, 2021 issue

Julie Mehretu, John Akomfrah, Isaac Julien, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, and twenty-nine others

Open Letter: Release Otero Alcántara

The Cuban government is detaining the artist solely for expressing his ideas through his art and for his nonviolent defense of human rights.

May 26, 2021

Lavender Au

The Protest Families of Hong Kong

Popular resistance to China’s increasingly repressive hold over the territory is creating remarkable new ties of kinship and solidarity.

May 22, 2021

Jenny Uglow

Contagious Constitutions

Linda Colley shows in her new book that written constitutions developed both as a means of shoring up entrenched rulers and of turning successful rebellions into legitimate governments.

June 10, 2021 issue

Cass R. Sunstein

What Price Is Right?

Both government regulators and private companies regularly assign a monetary value to human lives. A new book argues that the price is too low, and can entrench inequalities.

June 10, 2021 issue