781-283-2142
Education
- B.A., St. Michael's College (1981)
- M.A. (1983) and Ph.D (1987), University of Virginia.
Research and Teaching Areas
Sociological theory, sociology of knowledge, sociology of culture, mass media and communication, and sociology of communist and post-communist culture, human rights.
Biography
Thomas Cushman is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. His areas of study include sociological theory, comparative sociology, genocide, and the sociology of culture and ideology. He is the author of numerous books and articles on topics ranging from cultural dissidence in Russia, freedom of expression, and the wars in Bosnia and Hercegovina and Iraq. His most recent publications include George Orwell: Into the 21st Century, edited with John Rodden (Paradigm, 2005); A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, editor (University of California Press, 2005); Terror, Iraq and the Left: Christopher Hitchens and His Critics, edited with Simon Cottee (New York University Press, 2008); and The Religious in Responses to Mass Atrocity, edited with Thomas Brudholm (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
He is the Founding Editor of Human Rights Review, the Founding Editor, Former Editor-in-chief and current Editor-at-Large of The Journal of Human Rights
Professor Cushman was an Associate at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University in 2002-2003, Siskind Visiting Professsor of Sociology and Internet Studies at Brandeis University in 2002, Visiting Professor of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2005, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar Academic Core Session on "International Law and Human Rights", chaired by Lloyd Cutler and Sir Richard Goldstone. In 2008, he addressed the House of Lords of Great Britain on the issue of the fragility of modern democracies in the face of the new authoritarianisms of the 21st century.
He is currently a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and an Honorary Professor in the Social Sciences at The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Professor Cushman was selected as the recipient of the Saint Michael's College Academic Hall of Fame Award, which is given to recognize those graduates whose scholarship has exemplified the academic, cultural, and civic scholarly goals of the College.
His current work is in several major areas which unite sociological theory and practice in the examination of international culture and politics, especially human rights. He is currently at work on a theory of genocide, entitled Modernity and Genocide, which explores the reasons for the persistence of genocide in the modern world. He is also completing a long essay entitled “The Sentimental Bases of Human Rights” based on lectures given at the University of the Witwaterstand in 2008, which is a theoretical and philosophical exploration of the subjective bases of engagement with social suffering. He is working with Professor Bryan S. Turner, also of Wellesley, on a sociological study of the culture of greed in modern capitalist societies, which focuses on the moral economy of the credit crisis of 2008-2009. He has a life-long interest in understanding the sociology of intellectuals, especially the support of left-wing intellectuals for fascism and dictatorships.
Professor Cushman’s passions include dialectical combat, contemporary art glass, black and white photography and film, butterflies, and outdoor adventure.