April 13, 2026
Benhabib is the recipient of the 2025 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought among many other awards, prizes and honorary degrees.
The 1951 Refugee Convention is one of the most important human rights documents of the post-WW II period. Like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (on which it is based) and the Genocide Convention, both of 1948, it embodied the hopes and aspirations of a new world order. Never again would those persecuted on account of race, religion, ethnicity, political beliefs or social group fail to find protection and refuge in countries other than those in which such persecution occurred.
The 1951 Convention, however, was beset with some difficulties from the beginning. Originally, it excluded countries of the Global South, whether by omission or by design. To this day, India is not a signatory of the Convention because the India-Pakistan War could find no place within its framework. Likewise, the categories of “protected groups” named in the convention were based on essentializing assumptions and excluded gender persecution. Furthermore, to qualify for refugee status, a person had to show “reasonable fear of persecution” accompanied by detailed documentation. This led to inevitable bureaucratic and juridical entanglements which were, in part, responsible for many states’ failure to comply with it.
Today, the utopian hope framed in the convention--the hope that the persecuted would find safe haven and that there could be a world without such persecution--ies in smithereens. Major signatories, such as the United States and the European Union, have developed all sorts of “non-entrée” (no entry), rendition and displacement techniques which have created “lawless zones and rightless subjects,” as Ayelet Shachar and Benhabib call this process in their new edited collection (Cambridge University Press, 2025). The inherent dilemmas in complying with the 1951 convention may thus be the canary in the coal mine that anticipated the destructive policies of the new Trump administration vis-à-vis a world order based on international law and human rights.
This program is presented by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and is co-sponsored by Penn State Dickinson Law, the Center for Global Study & Engagement, the departments of environmental studies and international studies and the law & policy program.
Seyla Benhabib is the Eugene Meyer Professor Emerita of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University and a senior-research Fellow at Columbia Law School and the Center for Contemporary Critical Thought.
Benhabib is the recipient of the 2025 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought among many other awards, prizes and honorary degrees, and her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her most recent books include At the Margins of the Modern State. Critical Theory and Law (2025); Exile, Statelessness and Migration. Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin (2018) and, co-edited with Ayelet Shachar, Lawless Zones, Rightless Subjects. Migration, Asylum, and Shifting Borders (2025). Migrations and Mobilities: Gender, Borders and Citizenship (2009), which she co-edited, was named by Choice one of the outstanding academic books of the year. Her 2004 The Rights of Others. Aliens, Citizens and Residents was the winner of the Ralph Bunche Award of the APSA.
For more information, visit https://www.clarkeforum.org/monday-april-13-2026/
Further information
- Location: Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium
- Time: 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
- Cost: Free