Isaac Stethem

Isaac Stethem is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory and a Core Preceptor in Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University. Their research interests include sovereignty and territory, particularly as they relate to the political and legal governance of spaces beyond state borders, as well as the history of modern Jewish political thought.

Mx. Stethem’s dissertation, entitled Planetary Peoples: Historical Continuity and Contemporary Spaces, offers normative proposals for the governance of planetary resources in an age of climate transformation, human use of outer space, and proposals for geoengineering. In particular, they argue that the reconstructions of two historical reference points for planetary peoplehood are especially useful: first, the conception of collective humanity imagined by the concept of the “common heritage of mankind,” which arose from international negotiations over the status of extra-sovereign spaces in the 1960s and 1970s, and second, the attempts by 19th- and 20th-century Jewish political theorists—including Hannah Arendt, Simon Dubnow, and Chaim Zhitlowsky—to rethink the relationship between political peoples, territory, and sovereignty.

Mx. Stethem’s research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Leo Baeck Institute (London), and the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

Before enrolling at Columbia, Mx. Stethem earned a B.A. and M.A. from McGill University and worked in the non-profit sector in Canada.