SIS Book Launch: Common Justice
About this Event
The SIS Office of Research invites you to a book talk with Department of Global Inquiry Professor Hansong Li on his new book Common Justice: Interpolitical Thought in Western, Indian & Chinese Traditions. He will be joined in discussion by fellow SIS and AU scholars Amitav Acharya, Akbar Ahmed, Piper Campbell, Thomas Merrill, and Jin Y Park.
Tuesday, December 1
1:00 - 2:30 PM EST
Abramson Family Founders Room, American University School of International Service
About the Book:
Theorists of justice set out to solve a difficult puzzle: What ideas, if any, could guide us to live together in harmony? While some enumerate universal values, critics argue that these very principles are ineluctably contingent and culturally specific—that human societies affirm vastly different tenets across intellectual traditions.
In this bold, ambitious book, Hansong Li offers an alternative approach to world justice. He argues that while different cultures do conceive of justice in different ways, many also share important relational norms—ideas about how they might relate to and reason with other polities. To demonstrate as much, Li identifies parallel patterns of interpolitical arguments in ancient Greek, Indian, and classical Chinese traditions. Eschewing claims to universalism, he argues that the comparative study of these intellectual heritages can help transfigure us-versus-them logics. Thinkers in these traditions saw communities as guests and hosts, committed to love and justice, in pursuit of ethics and expediency. Then too, these thinkers all were concerned with stability and subversion, constraint and consonance, beauty and violence. Most significantly, Li traces among the three traditions an aspiration to define justice in the broadest possible terms: not as something worked out merely in courts but as a value of global and cosmic consequence.
A work of rigorous philological scholarship and dazzling philosophical range, Common Justice points toward a new avenue for global political thought and comparative political theory. More than tracing how justice has been elaborated in different contexts, it demonstrates how—while using culturally and linguistically distinct concepts—diverse peoples have long been thinking in startlingly compatible ways, enabling the possibility of global justice.
About the Author:
Hansong Li is a political philosopher and intellectual historian, currently Assistant Professor of Global Inquiry at the American University’s School of International Service. His research spans comparative political thought across classical antiquities, genealogies and crises of international law, as well as the history of early modern political, economic, and legal thought. His scholarship explores how justice is debated across borders, between peoples and polities. He is the author of Common Justice: Interpolitical Thought in Western, Indian, and Chinese Traditions (Harvard University Press, 2026), and has published edited translations of Tangut Language and Manuscripts (Brill, 2020) and The Economy of Western Xia (Brill, 2021), as well as Dialogues in the History of Political Thought (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2022). He has taught at Harvard University, Freie Universität Berlin, and American University, co-chairs the Historical International Studies Cluster, and cofounded the Association for Global Political Thought.
About the Panelists:
Piper Campbell
Ambassador Piper Campbell Chairs the Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security at American University's School of International Service, where she also directs the ASEAN and Indo-Pacific Studies Initiative. A career diplomat with over thirty years of experience in the U.S. Foreign Service, she served as U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia (2012–2015), Chargé d’Affaires and Head of Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Consul General in Basrah, Iraq. Her teaching and research focus on U.S. foreign policy, diplomacy, national security, and the geopolitical dynamics in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia and U.S.–China relations.
Akbar Ahmed
Ambassador Akbar Ahmed is Distinguished Professor and the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University's School of International Service, formerly Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. Aside from diplomacy, Ahmed is an internationally renowned anthropologist and philosopher. His scholarship explores Islamic civilization, Muslim societies, interfaith relations, and the encounters between Islam and the West. He is the author of numerous influential books, including Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, The Thistle and the Drone, and America at the Crossroads: Race, Islam, and Leadership. Through his scholarship, public engagement, and interfaith initiatives, he has made significant contributions to cross-cultural understanding and dialogue.
Amitav Acharya
Amitav Acharya is Distinguished Professor of International Relations and UNESCO Chair in Transnational Challenges and Governance at American University's School of International Service. A leading scholar of international relations, global governance, and Asian regionalism, he is known for his pioneering contributions to the study of norm localization, regional orders, and the Global International Relations (or “Global IR”) approach. He served as President of the International Studies Association from 2014 to 2015 and has held academic appointments at universities across Asia, Europe, and North America. His influential books include The End of American World Order, Constructing Global Order, and The Once and Future World Order, which examine the historical diversity and changing foundations of international order.
Thomas Merrill
Thomas Merrill is an American political theorist, currently Associate Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, where he directs the Political Theory Institute and the Lincoln Scholars Program. Merrill’s research examines the intellectual foundations of modern political life, particularly the relationship between philosophy, liberalism, and political institutions. He is the author of Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015), which received the Delba Winthrop Prize for Best Recent Work in Political Philosophy, and co-editor of several volumes, including The Political Thought of the Civil War. He also edits the American Political Thought.
Jin Y. Park
Jin Y. Park is the William Fraser McDowell Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University. She served as department chair from 2020 to 2026 and as the founding director of the Asian Studies Program from 2013 to 2020. An internationally recognized scholar of Asian and intercultural philosophy, Park examines issues of gender, violence, the politics of discrimination, and narrative philosophy. Marginality has been a consistent theme throughout her work, as she explores philosophical, social, and political forms of marginalization, seeking to uncover the power structures that sustain these inequities and to amplify the voices of those at the margins. She is the author of numerous books, including Women and Buddhist Philosophy and Marginality: Solidarity and the Fight for Social Change. Park has served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the North American Korean Philosophy Association, and the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy.
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