On the 27th of September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford, a Professor at Palo Alto University, appeared in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to testify against Brett Kavanaugh, who was at the time a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, for sexually assaulting her at a high school party they both attended thirty-six years earlier.

Visibly shaken, she went on to describe how Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, removed her clothes, and covered her mouth as she tried to scream: “It was hard for me to breathe,” she told the Committee, “and I thought that Brett was going to accidentally kill me.”

Not long after, Kavanaugh submitted a letter to the Committee calling her testimony nothing but a “smear” and affirming that he would “not be intimidated into withdrawing from the process”. Despite public outrage towards this trial, Kavanagh was still confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court by a narrow victory of 50 – 48, and President Trump was quick to offer his sympathy: “What they put him through – the Democrats – over the last few weeks, it’s horrible. If you look at what he’s had to endure – horrible. False – statements. It doesn’t get any worse. But the beautiful thing is he is now in, and he’s going to be there for a long time.”

The interesting thing about this case is that both sides claim to be the victim: Mrs. Ford claims she is a victim of sexual assault, while Mr. Kavanaugh claims he is a victim of a defamatory smear campaign. But are these claims to victimhood equally valid? And how can we adjudicate between the two to determine who the real victim is?

Hamza King sits down with Lilie Chouliaraki to discuss these questions. Lilie is a Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood (2024).

➡️ London School of Economics and Political Science: https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/lilie-chouliaraki

➡️ Wronged: The Weaponisation of Victimhood (2024): https://cup.columbia.edu/book/wronged/9780231550239/

#philosophy #podcast #ethics

0:00 - Introduction

2:27 - What got you interested in victimhood?

6:01 - Why did you decide to write this book?

7:04 - How has victimhood been understood throughout history?

11:10 - How is victimhood portrayed in the film Forrest Gump?

17:18 - Did reverse victimhood play a role in the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in June 2022?

21:40 - What is the difference between vulnerability can victimhood?

28:25 - How can we evaluate the legitimacy of claims to victimhood?

33:03 - Who is the real victim: Christine Blasey Ford or Brett Kavanaugh?

37:40 - Outro

The Rwandan Genocide was one of the most horrific events of the twentieth century. After decades of unrest between Rwanda’s two biggest tribes, the Tutsi’s and the Hutu’s, civil war finally broke out on the 7th of April 1994, and over the next thirty days, 800,000 people were killed in cold blood, while the world stood back and watched.

UN forces were in Rwanda at the time, but they were ordered not to intervene, and many withdrew within the first few weeks of fighting. Kofi Annan, Head of Peacekeeping at the UN during the genocide, later said: “All of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it. On behalf of the United Nations, I acknowledge this failure and express my deep recourse”.

This acknowledgement that the world should have done more to end the genocide led to the development of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine, which forms the main political framework for deliberating about humanitarian intervention. But do states ever have a responsibility to protect the human rights of citizens in other states? And what moral considerations need to be taken into account when doing so?

Hamza King sits down with Jonathan Parry to discuss these questions. Jonathan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of 'The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: An Introduction' (2025).

➡️ Jonathan Parry (LSE): https://jonathan-parry.weebly.com/

➡️ London School of Economics and Political Science: https://www.lse.ac.uk/cpnss/people/jonathan-parry

➡️ The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: An Introduction (2025): https://www.routledge.com/The-Ethics-of-Humanitarian-Intervention-An-Introduction/Parry/p/book/9781138082342

Karl Popper was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Widely considered to be the father of modern science, Popper introduced the principle of falsificationism which states that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must have a hypothesis which is falsifiable, or capable of being disproven. A theory with a hypothesis which cannot be disproven, like the belief that God created the universe in seven days, is not rightly understood to be a scientific theory.

Popper turned his attention to political philosophy during the Second World War, culminating in the publication of The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945, where Popper offered a defence of liberal values, famously stating that “We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

Jason McKenzie Alexander, who has spent several decades writing on the philosophy of science, has followed in Popper’s footsteps and turned his attention to political philosophy in his latest book, The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves (2024). Jason warns that there has been an inversion of values across Western societies, where many now view the Open Society as a threat, rather than something to be celebrated, and argues that we must revise and reinvigorate our understanding of the Open Society, making it relevant to the problems we face in the twenty-first century.

➡️ The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves: press.lse.ac.uk/site/books/m/10.31389/lsepress.ose/ (LSE Press)

➡️ J. McKenzie Alexander: jmckalex.org/home/Home.php (J. McKenzie Alexander's Home Page)

➡️ London School of Economics and Political Science: https://www.lse.ac.uk/cpnss/people/Jason-McKenzie-Alexander