Thomas Cushman is Deffenbaugh de Hoyos Carlson Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College, USA. He is the Founding Editor and former Editor-in-Chief of Human Rights Review, and Founding Editor, former Editor-in-Chief, and Editor-at-Large for the Journal of Human Rights. He is 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.