![Headshot of Kenneth Roth, seen wearing a jacket and facing the camera](/sites/default/files/styles/square/public/media_2021/04/202104staff_ken_headshot.jpg?h=5282c872&itok=6PQIxSIG)
Kenneth Roth
Kenneth Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School for Public and International Affairs. Until August 2022, he served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in some 100 countries. Before that, Roth was a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington.
A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigative and advocacy missions around the world, meeting with dozens of heads of state and countless ministers. He is quoted widely in the media and has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of human rights issues, devoting special attention to the world’s most dire situations, the conduct of war, the foreign policies of the major powers, the work of the United Nations, and the global contest between autocracy and democracy.
Roth is currently writing a book, Righting Wrongs, to be published by Knopf, about the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to defend human rights, drawing on his years of experience.
Articles Authored:
Defending Human Rights Values Under Attack, 11 Newspapers in Europe, June 22, 2016
Multimedia:
Lateline Interview on Manus Island detention Center Closing, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 27, 2016
Media Profiles:
"Thunder on the Rights," Vanity Fair, September 19, 2008
Human Rights Watch Reports:
Twin Threats: How the Politics of Fear and the Crushing of Civil Society Imperil Global Rights (January 27, 2016)
Articles Authored
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April 26, 2013
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April 12, 2013
The Sun Rises on Human Rights
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April 9, 2013
Egypt’s NGO Funding Crackdown
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March 19, 2013
U.S. Has Self to Blame for Iraq Failures
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March 11, 2013
What Rules Should Govern US Drone Attacks?
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February 8, 2013
How to Ease Syrian Suffering
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February 4, 2013
How to Keep the Arab Spring Blossoming
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February 4, 2013
The New Syria Will Need Human Rights, Not Reprisals
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January 17, 2013
The Day After
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January 2, 2013
Barack Obama: Dump These 8 Unsavory Allies