Books by Scholars
Recent and forthcoming books written and edited by Rhodes Scholars.
For a full list of books by Scholars, please visit the Rhodes Scholars Library Catalogue. To add a book to this list or the catalogue, email connect@rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk.
Polarization is a defining feature of politics in the United States and many other democracies. Yet although there is much research focusing on the effects of polarization on domestic politics, little is known about how polarization influences international cooperation and conflict. Democracies are thought to have advantages over nondemocratic nations in international relations, including the ability to keep foreign policy stable across time, credibly signal information to adversaries, and maintain commitments to allies. Does domestic polarization affect these “democratic advantages”? In this timely book, Rachel Myrick argues that polarization reshapes the nature of constraints on democratic leaders, which in turn erodes the advantages democracies have in foreign affairs.
It's one thing to fill your house with gorgeous plants; it's another to keep them happy for weeks, months and years. Medical doctor and passionate plant lover Nora Mutalima offers a simple, science-driven guide to creating your own indoor jungle and keeping it thriving with minimal effort.
A compelling, stirring narrative of the Starbucks and Tesla unionization efforts, telling the broader story of the new, nationwide labor movement unfolding in our era of political and social unrest. As one of the exciting new faces of the American Labor Movement, Jaz Brisack argues that while workers often organize when their place of work is toxic, it’s equally important to organize when you love your job. Here, Brisack delivers practical advice on how workers can and should stand up for their rights, especially when electoral politics seem to have failed us.
An approachable guide to the political, social, and demographic changes happening in Africa and why they matter for the rest of the world.
Africa is undergoing an astounding transformation that will usher in a new era of political volatility and experimentation in the coming years. The region is in the midst of a historically unprecedented demographic surge that has skewed the median age in most countries to below twenty years old. This demographic moment coincides with three factors likely to amplify the political agendas of African youth: rapid urbanization, dramatically increased digital connectivity, and increasing recognition that old political narratives are no longer fit for purpose.
An urgent critique of the market-fundamentalist ideals undermining democratic politics, pointing the way to principled reforms.
Democracy has been hollowed out by capitalism. A narrow view of markets and their aims—prioritizing efficiency, profit, and growth—now dominates thinking about democracy itself. Citizens are ignorant of the deep principles of self-governance, having long since adopted a facile equation between democracy and voting as a consumer choice. Lisa Herzog argues that democracy is still possible, but only if democratic values get embedded in everyday experience—including economic experience. That requires new ways of thinking about markets and their goals.
In face of historical injustices such as war, colonialism, slavery, and genocides, what responsibilities, if any, do the present generations owe – and to whom are such responsibilities owed? Drawing upon methods of political theory, empirical politics, legal philosophy, and applied ethics, this book advances the novel account of Collective Moral Debt Reparative Justice.
It aims to establish that descendants of victims inherit claims to reparation by which they can hold inheritors of perpetrators responsible for discharging. This argument applies particularly well to collectives meeting the threshold for group agency and complicit agents. Not only does the concept of “moral debt” serve as an emphatic metaphor for the distinctive ways by which perpetrators and victims, descendants and inheritors are connected – it also provides the compelling explanation hitherto missing as for why claims of reparative justice do not go away merely in virtue of the passage of time.
Freedom of speech has never been more important—or more controversial. From debates about what's permissible on social media, to the politics of campus speakers and corporate advertisements, the First Amendment is incessantly in the news and constantly being held up as the fundamental principle of American democracy. Yet, in reality, it has contributed more to eroding our democracy than supporting it.
In Fearless Speech, Dr. Mary Anne Franks emphasizes the distinction between what speech a democratic society should protect and what speech a democratic society should promote.