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.
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.