Michael Goodhart, Ph.D.

Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, University of Pittsburgh

Bio

Michael Goodhart is Professor of Political Science and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies. He is also Professor (by courtesy) of Philosophy and a faculty fellow in the University Honors College. His core research interests include democracy, human rights, (in)justice, and emancipatory political struggles. He is the author of Injustice: Political Theory for the Real World (Oxford 2018), Democracy as Human Rights: Freedom and Equality in the Age of Globalization (Routledge, 2005), contributing editor of Human Rights: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, 2009, 2012, 2016, 2022), and contributing co-editor of Social Movements and World-System Transformation (Routledge 2017) and Human Rights in the 21st Century: Continuity and Change since 9/11 (Palgrave, 2011). He is also author of numerous articles and book chapters and has lectured widely in North America and around the world.

From 2017-2021, Goodhart directed the University of Pittsburgh's Global Studies Center. In AY 2021-22, he was a fellow in residence of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. He is a past Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellow (2008-09) and was Guest Professor in the Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (2008-10). Goodhart was co-President of the Association for Political Theory from 2017-2020 and is a past President of the American Political Science Association's Human Rights section. In 2018 he won the Provost's Award for Diversity in the Curriculum, and he is a member of the Provost's Committee on Anti-Black Racism and Transformative Pedagogy. He chaired the APSA Presidential Task Force on Democracy, Economic Security, and Social Justice in a Volatile World.

Goodhart is an affiliate of the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut and sits on the editorial boards of Polity, Perspectives on Politics, and the Journal of Human Rights. He is currently President of the board of directors of The Global Switchboard, a network stewardship organization that promotes equitable global engagement in the Pittsburgh region, and a member of the coordinating committee of the Pittsburgh Human Rights City Alliance and of the steering committee of the North American Human Rights Cities Alliance.