JMB Launches Digital Event Series on Human Rights, Migration, and Jewish History

Hetty Berg, Director of the JMB, explains: “The digital lecture and discussion series addresses a topic of great social relevance and is aimed at an international audience. It sheds light on the visionary ideas behind human rights achievements that are often taken for granted today and asks to what extent those achievements are once again being called into question. The series helps broaden today’s often narrow perspective on migration. It also considers which historical events and legal or philosophical texts can inspire us to imagine a better future.”

Each event will start with a lecture by the invited speaker, followed by a conversation with Dinah Riese and an audience Q&A. All lectures and conversations will be in English. Dinah Riese heads the domestic news section of the daily newspaper taz. She previously edited the paper’s section on migration and integration.

We would like to thank the Berthold Leibinger Stiftung for its support of the Digital Lecture Series.

The event series is being held in partnership with the taz. Each event will be livestreamed and published on YouTube as a taz Talk.

27 May 2026, 7 pm, Seyla Benhabib in Conversation with Dinah Riese: The 1951 Refugee Convention and the Collapse of the International Order Post 1945

In the opening lecture, philosopher Seyla Benhabib and Dinah Riese will discuss the 1951 Refugee Convention. The conversation will address dilemmas that have been inherent in the document from the outset: the exclusion of countries of the Global South, problematic assumptions underlying the categories of “protected groups,” and the bureaucratic and legal hurdles to proving a “well-founded fear of persecution” in order to attain recognition as a refugee.

The Geneva Convention’s vision of safe havens and a world without persecution is now facing a profound crisis. Important signatories such as the United States and countries of the European Union have instituted entry bans, extradition mechanisms, and expulsion techniques that have created “lawless zones and rightless subjects.” Seyla Benhabib will explain why the Geneva Convention now reveals the first signs of a failure to uphold a world order based on international law and human rights.

Seyla Benhabib is one of the most influential political philosophers and political theorists of our time. Until her retirement, she was Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University and also taught at Harvard University and the New School for Social Research. She now researches and teaches at Columbia Law School in New York.

9 June 2026, 7 pm, Itamar Mann in Conversation with Dinah Riese: Humanity at Sea

The second lecture focuses on the Mediterranean, which has been a space of exchange and migration for many centuries – including for many Jewish migrants. Current approaches to both trans-Mediterranean migration and sea rescue initiatives reveal weaknesses in international law and human rights. The Mediterranean has become a mass grave. In his 2016 book Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law, Itamar Mann examined legal, political, and ethical questions that migration across the Mediterranean continues to raise today. Drawing on Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Levinas, he develops the utopian concept of a “right of encounter” by taking a historical perspective on Jewish migration to Palestine, Vietnamese boat people, and Syrian refugees since 2015 – particularly against the backdrop of increasingly restrictive national and European migration policies.

Itamar Mann is Professor of International Law at the University of Haifa (currently on leave) and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Münster.

21 July 2026, 7 pm, Ayelet Shachar in Conversation with Dinah Riese: Shifting Borders: Human Rights and Territorial Sovereignty

As part of the Digital Lecture Series, legal scholar Ayelet Shachar will speak with journalist Dinah Riese about the fraught relationship between human rights and territorial notions of sovereignty. Ayelet Shachar will identify fundamental developments shaping the field of law and mobility and examine the legal strategies that have detached borders from the map. Contrary to widespread claims that workable migration policies are unattainable or unimaginable, Ayelet Shachar points to legal possibilities that could help overcome the current deadlock.

Ayelet Shachar is Professor of Comparative Law at the University of California, Berkeley.

1 September 2026, 7 pm, Maximilian Pichl in Conversation with Dinah Riese: Repressive Migration Control and Europe’s Authoritarian Turn

For three decades, European asylum and migration policy has been marked by both openness and exclusion. The transfer of asylum policy to the EU level liberalized asylum law in many countries, while at the same time creating instruments of repressive migration control through Frontex and migration pacts.

This historical compromise between liberal human rights and currents of conservative nationalism has now failed. The new Common European Asylum System (CEAS) represents a significant tightening of the previous asylum system. In the European Parliament, conservative parties have been joining forces with the far-right to pass deportation measures. This tightening of asylum law is part of a broader authoritarian turn, though existing human rights safeguards still prevent Europe from closing itself off completely. The lecture provides an overview of the thirty-year history of European asylum policy and explains why a new turning point is emerging at this moment.

Maximilian Pichl is Professor of the Law of Social Work at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

29 September 2026, 7 pm, Miriam Rürup in Conversation with Dinah Riese: Statelessness and Visions of Belonging

In societies shaped by immigration, citizenship guarantees equal participation, access to social protections, and a voice in political decision-making. It is also a prerequisite for human rights protection. What does it mean, then, to be stateless? How did statelessness become a mass phenomenon, why does it continue to affect so many people today, and what are the implications for their everyday lives? This event will explore how the “right to have rights” has been understood in legal and social terms beyond affiliation with a nation-state. Granting citizenship rights has always been, and remains, a politically contested field. This discussion will consider the relationship between citizenship and human rights from both historical and utopian perspectives, asking how rights might be expanded and how political solidarity might be strengthened.

Miriam Rürup is Professor of European-Jewish Studies and Director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam.

Up-to-date information about the digital lecture series is available at https://www.jmberlin.de/en/digital-lecture-series-human-rights.