Abstract
This paper examines Barack Obama's potential to be a transformative leader for human rights, as many suggested he would be. Specifically, it utilizes a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis conducted from January to the beginning of October of 2009 to identify Obama's personal strengths and weaknesses relevant to human rights as well as the social, political and cultural opportunities and threats he faces. We examine Obama's background, his senate record, and his progress to date as president. Gleaning information from news reports, Obama's own writing, speeches, and website, books, reports by human rights organizations, scholarly articles, and conversations with human rights activists, we determine that messages are mixed to date. While Obama has great potential, his personal style, political ambition, and the threats he inherited will make it difficult to take progressive human rights action, at least during his first term. We end the paper with a call to action for sociologists, organizers, and activists.
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