John Torpey teaches sociology, history, and European studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is at work writing a book about the global spread of demands for reparations for historical injustices, to be published by Harvard University Press.

Recent articles

Does the worldwide concern with public apology represent a turning of society’s face towards the past, one that closes the possibility of imagining a better future?

At this stage in globalising history “America” has come to be seen by many as a stand-in for the “cosmopolitanism” that was once associated with Jews. “America” represents some kind of soulless, materialistic, rootless way of life that they detest.