Feminist Endowed Lecture Series: Do Muslim Women Really Need Freedom?

In the aftermath of September 11, we saw wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified in the name of “liberating” Muslim women. Postcolonial feminists responded to this fact by encouraging skepticism of the universal value of freedom. But liberal feminists worry that such skepticism means refusing to take seriously the oppression of women in “other” cultures. Dr. Serene Khader, assistant professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, argues it is possible to take concerns about imperialism seriously without sliding into relativism if we conceptualize feminism as a “freedom-agnostic doctrine.”