H U M A N. R I G H T S. P R O G R A M.
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H U M A N. R I G H T S. P R O G R A M. |
The following feature article appeared in the campus publication Mosaic in February, 2000. Although some of the courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed in the meantime, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Human Rights Program. For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the program's homepage.
HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAM
Illuminating the legal, historical, and political issues that are shaping the world
Trinity College Human Rights Program Director Maryam Elahi was an undergraduate student majoring in biology when she heard a speech that would eventually change not only her life, but also the lives of future students at Trinity.
The impact of the lecture, by a founder of Physicians for Human Rights, an organization in which doctors use their medical knowledge to investigate and prevent human rights violations, prompted Elahi to devote her career to the field. And it was Elahi’s devotion that spurred the creation of the Human Rights Program at Trinity, the first human rights curriculum of its kind at an undergraduate liberal arts institution in the country.
The Human Rights Program, which was launched at Trinity in 1998, offers students the opportunity to take classes in several disciplines, all of which address human rights issues. The program also allows students to engage in some of the most significant current human rights struggles, and to interact with those who have confronted the issues of human rights firsthand. The program offers a minor in human rights and also gives students the option of pursuing a self-designed major in the field.
"Through the Human Rights Program, students get a more deeply informed understanding of the complex legal, historical, and political issues that are shaping an increasingly interdependent world," Elahi said. "This program prepares students to make a difference in that world."
Students sign up to receive information on Amnesty International during Human Rights Day. Elahi, who came to Trinity as the director of international programs after nearly a decade as an attorney with Amnesty International, developed the idea of the Human Rights Program as one that would consist of both academic and co-curricular components. The proposal included plans for a curriculum that spanned a dozen departments and offered courses on a diverse array of topics, including "An Anthropology of Oppression"; "Health and Human Rights"; "International Human Rights Law and Advocacy"; "Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights"; "The Struggle for Civil Rights in the United States"; "Human Rights Through Performance"; and "The Law, Gender Issues, and the Supreme Court." The program also encompasses a yearlong lecture series, a summer fellowship program, and an advocacy fellow-in-residence program.
"Because the subject of human rights cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries, the Trinity human rights program is a perfect enterprise to capture the breadth of human rights concerns," said Maurice Wade, director of public policy studies and professor of philosophy and international studies at Trinity. Wade (left) has developed a course for the program that explores the meaning of human rights and confronts whether the concept is universal or a Western notion imposed on other cultures.
A lecture series
One co-curricular aspect of the program, the lecture series, was launched in the fall of 1998 with the visit of Bianca Jagger, an internationally known environmental and human rights activist, who discussed with hundreds of Trinity students the genocide of Kosovars. Other lectures have featured Marjorie Agosin, author of Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love, a Book on the Arpillera Movement in Chile; Adotei Akwei, advocacy director on Africa at Amnesty International; Roberta Cohen, a senior analyst at the Brookings Institution; Juan Mendez, executive director of the Inter-American Institute on Human Rights in Costa Rica; and Martin O’Brien, a human rights advocate in Belfast. O’Brien also served as an advocacy fellow-in-residence, a feature of the Human Rights Program that brings distinguished human rights activists to Trinity for one week at a time to participate in classes and meet with students, faculty and community organizers.
Student fellowships
J. Russell Fugett ’01, president of the Student Government Association at Trinity, worked with Akwei as a human rights summer fellow. His experience in the program has sparked his desire to help establish an Amnesty International chapter on Trinity’s campus, he said. "My participation in the Human Rights Program has really opened my eyes and provided me with a new global perspective," Fugett said. "Besides realizing how Africa is ignored in many contexts, I have also learned that there are many places in the world, including the United States, where human rights are abused."
Patrick Nolen ‘00, another program participant, traveled to Ghana as a human rights summer fellow. Nolen worked with the Planned Parenthood chapter in that country, educating villagers about birth control and sexually transmitted diseases. Although he was involved in the Amnesty International chapter at his high school, Nolen says his experience in Trinity’s program broadened his view of human rights. "Spending the summer in Ghana with the Human Rights Program made me realize that human rights is not about the right to have, it’s about the right to be educated, especially if that education allows you to improve your condition. This awareness and heightened appreciation for the value of human rights transcended my work, and I realized human rights are something I should consider all the time," Nolen said.
"This program is definitely something that distinguishes Trinity from other liberal arts programs," added Erik Anderson ’00, a neuroscience major who also served as a peer educator in Ghana. The program allows students to use clinical knowledge in a community setting."
A Luce Professorship
In addition to the lecture series and summer program, the Human Rights Program also features a Luce Professorship, established under a grant from the Henry R. Luce Foundation. Trinity received the grant to create the Henry R. Luce Professorship in Health and Human Rights in July, and a nationwide search is underway for an educator with credentials in science or medicine, practical field experience, and the versatility to integrate health and human rights. In addition to teaching, the Luce professor will supervise undergraduate research and community service projects, organize a biennial conference on health and human rights, and conduct faculty-development activities on health and human rights.
The Human Rights Program recently was also selected by a panel of leading journalists to participate in the Media Fellowships Program sponsored by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, which will bring a journalist to the College to explore human rights issues. A reporter from Zambia, Africa, has been selected by the Human Rights Program’s faculty advisory board to participate in the program in March.
"Institutions such as Trinity have an obligation not only to their students but also to their communities and the world at large," said Trinity College President Evan S. Dobelle. "Through the Human Rights Program, young men and women come to understand, intellectually and on a visceral level, the predicaments of people and communities less privileged than theirs."-Andrea Comer
