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Elahi also launched a human rights scholar-in-residence and offered internships and summer fellowships so students could get real-world experience. \u201cWe wanted students to have the chance to roll up their sleeves and get a real sense of the kind of work you need to do to make meaningful progress in this field,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
While the program has evolved over the last quarter century, its mission has remained the same. Carbonetti says that promise of a human rights education continues to draw students to the program, which graduated its largest class yet in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s students are really interested in learning how they can make a difference,\u201d says Carbonetti, who took over the program in 2020, at a time when faculty and students were showing immense energy and momentum to effect change in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s murder and the corresponding surge in the Black Lives Matter movement. \u201cStudents recognize that the world has a lot of challenges, and they want to understand what tools are available to them to try and address these challenges,\u201d Carbonetti says.<\/p>\n
One of the main tenets of the program is helping students appreciate that the best toolbox is shaped by an interdisciplinary liberal arts education, according to Carbonetti. Students in the Human Rights Studies Program integrate classes from disciplines across political science, law, arts, English, public policy, sociology, anthropology, and neuroscience, and it\u2019s not unusual for them to double major. The program\u2019s curriculum also includes a strong arts component, so students learn about the power of storytelling and building empathy for human rights through that field.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want students to recognize that you can\u2019t just stay in your lane and hope to solve any of these problems,\u201d says Carbonetti. \u201cHuman rights sits at the nexus of so many disciplines, and we want students to learn many different things so they can think creatively and critically about some of the world\u2019s most complicated problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carbonetti says the program has grown over the last 25 years, thanks to support from the administration and contributing faculty members and vital backing from donors including Everett Elting Jr. \u201958, P\u201985, \u201987 and wife Joanne P\u201985, \u201987 and Peter Blum \u201972. Donor support has allowed the hiring of the program\u2019s first full-time positions and tenure-track faculty members, including Diana Aldrete, assistant professor of language and culture studies and human rights studies, and Christina Heatherton, who, thanks to the Eltings\u2019 endowment of a professorship that supports the program\u2019s first fully tenured faculty member, is the inaugural Everett and Joanne Elting Associate Professor for Human Rights and Global Citizenship.<\/p>\n
Carbonetti highlights other significant changes in recent years, including expanding programmatic offerings such as the Trinity Prison Education Program, which provides college classes to incarcerated people in Connecticut and academic opportunities that help students learn about mass incarceration and refugee issues through field study, and granting students financial support for research, work, and internships outside the classroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving the resources to send students around the world to pursue internships and research projects has been a real game changer,\u201d says Carbonetti.<\/p>\n
Trinity also aims to connect students with experiential learning opportunities and internships at leading human rights organizations so they can get on-the-ground experience and a better understanding of how different communities experience human rights challenges, Carbonetti says. The program leverages its location in Hartford, which is brimming with human rights organizations and community groups, and collaborates with other institutions around the region to share resources and opportunities. Trinity also joined the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights Research, which allows the program to send students to a conference at Oxford University every summer. And the College offers a pair of experiential certificates in human rights, one focused on carceral systems and social change and the other a global migration and refugee resettlement lab.<\/p>\n
Izabella Bautista \u201926 says her experience outside the classroom has been some of the most valuable work she\u2019s done at Trinity. Bautista, who wants to go into immigration law, interned with the Northwestern Prison Education Program, which provides a liberal arts education to incarcerated students in Illinois. She says she received vital support through the Human Rights Studies Program to be able to do this internship.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuman rights studies helps us pop the bubbles that we\u2019re living in,\u201d she says. \u201cIt prepares us to better understand and weigh in on issues that are happening around the globe, in the United States, and right in Harford.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant-Bolton also has seized many of the program\u2019s opportunities to expand her education outside the classroom. She interned with a legal aid clinic and the Northwestern Prison Education Program, traveled to Louisiana to investigate environmental injustices in disadvantaged communities, and completed a research project analyzing the barriers to justice that women of color in Connecticut face when reentering society after incarceration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Human Rights Studies Program connects us with experiences that collapse the space between the academic classroom and the many injustices and oppression happening in the world,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve learned that the ideal engagement in the field of human rights requires both education and action, and that\u2019s exactly what I\u2019ve found at Trinity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant-Bolton says that while she was interested in a career focused on mass incarceration and the criminal justice system when she arrived at Trinity, she didn\u2019t know what to pursue as her major. After she landed in a human rights advocacy class her first fall, she knew she\u2019d found her academic home.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat class introduced me to the really complex, challenging, and critical dialogues happening in the field of human rights, and I knew the program would equip me with the skills and knowledge to pursue social justice advocacy and reimagine the world\u2019s most oppressive systems,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
While many graduates of the Human Rights Studies Program go on to work at places such as the United Nations or various NGOs and nonprofits, Carbonetti stresses that he wants to empower students to approach any job as a human rights job\u2014and to use their education as a critical lens to think about the world and how to make a positive impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents yearn for the chance to understand these big issues and find avenues for positive change,\u201d he says. \u201cA human rights education is it. That\u2019s how we diagnose some of the hardest problems we face and figure out how to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Header Image: Ben Carbonetti, director of the Human Rights Studies Program and senior lecturer in human rights studies (Photo: Nick Caito)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Emily Halnon Anna Grant-Bolton \u201925 says she wants to make a difference in the world\u2014and she says she feels ready to do it thanks to Trinity College\u2019s Human Rights Studies Program. \u201cThe jump between the work that I\u2019m doing at Trinity with human rights studies and what I hope to do immediately following graduation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"parent":4149,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4255","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n