Historical Injustice, Agency, and Resentment

Authors

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Princeton University; Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi
David Bromwich, Yale University

Date

3-31-2022

Description

In societies marked by deep and enduring structural inequality – often along lines of caste, race, gender, or other forms of identity – how is responsibility for such injustice assigned? How is the agency necessary to overcome historical injustice imagined? These lectures will use Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s writings as a starting point to explore the moral psychology of responding to historical injustice.

Details

Location: Low Library Rotunda

Time: 4:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Length: 02:02:20

About the Lecturer:

Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton University; Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi. Previously, he served as vice chancellor of Ashoka University and president of the CPR. He has taught at Harvard University and Jawaharlal Nehru University and has been a member of the Global Faculty at New York University School of Law.

Mehta has published widely on political theory, constitutional law, and the history of ideas, including his recently co-edited Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution. His policy experience includes being convener of the prime minister of India’s Knowledge Commission and member of the Government of India’s National Security Advisory Board. He is a prolific contributor to many public debates in forums such as The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs magazine, and is editorial consultant to The Indian Express.

Mehta holds a B.A. (first class) in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University. He was awarded the 2010 Malcolm S. Adiseshiah Award and the 2011 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences. In 2021, he was elected as a fellow of The British Academy.

About the Commentator:

David Bromwich
Sterling Professor of English, Yale University

David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University. He has taught and published widely on romanticism, modern poetry, and political thought after 1750. His books include Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry (Chicago, 2001), The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke (Harvard, 2014), Moral Imagination: Essays (Princeton, 2014), How Words Make Things Happen (Oxford, 2019), and American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us (Verso, 2019)

Bromwich draws on a range of thinkers, from Shakespeare and Milton to Burke and Lincoln. His essays on contemporary politics – dealing with America’s wars, civil liberties, cultural identity, and higher education – have appeared in The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and The Nation. He wrote against the Iraq War and U.S. interventions in Libya and Syria, and he has been a critic of the security apparatus built up by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Disciplines

Comparative and Foreign Law | Human Rights Law | Law | Legal History | Political Science

Recommended Citation

Mehta, Pratap Bhanu and Bromwich, David, "Historical Injustice, Agency, and Resentment" (2022). Ambedkar Law Lectures. 2.
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/ambedkar_law_lectures/2