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The impetus for this edited volume came from a simple phone call; a professor at a well-known research university (which shall remain nameless) wanted my advice on creating a human rights institute. Eager to encourage human rights education (HRE)—and particularly within a prestigious institution that held vast resources and expertise—I settled in for a long conversation. Within a matter of minutes, however, it became clear that this well-intentioned idea of “teaching human rights” was a vague one indeed. Aside from holding the general belief that human rights are important and interesting to students, this colleague had little knowledge of the practicalities of teaching rights and social justice —or how to support HRE in any sustained and meaningful way. After the phone call ended, it occurred to me that what we had been doing at my own institution, Webster University—a teaching-focused, private university based in Saint Louis, Missouri—was perhaps worth sharing. 1 Once this idea had formed in my mind, the foundation for this book was quickly established. I began to see how various approaches to HRE had combined in innovative and noteworthy ways. And so, writing from Saint Louis—a hub of refugee resettlement and “Black Lives Matter ” activism, among many other things—I offer this resource for educators hoping to engage in HRE at the university level.

This introductory chapter outlines the concept of HRE in higher education, including a preliminary review of its vast potential and inherent challenges, thus setting the stage for the discussions and case studies to come. Although respect for (and attention to) HRE has increased dramatically in recent decades, educators face ongoing obstacles to integrating human rights scholarship into existing programs and structures. The central argument guiding this book is that HRE in higher education requires the intersection of three complementary approaches centering on institutions, classrooms, and communities. First, institutions must not only support curricular offerings, but also integrate human rights norms into their governance and priorities. This requires valuing social responsibility and the public good , as well as engaged scholarship . Second, teaching strategies emphasizing human rights and social justice can transform our classrooms across academic disciplines , expanding HRE while supporting underprivileged student groups. Third, community approaches offer opportunities to expand HRE more broadly, building community–university partnerships and providing resources for enhanced advocacy and service work. Drawing on the experiences of my colleagues at Webster University (in Saint Louis, as well as our campus in Leiden, the Netherlands ), this edited volume offers possibilities for advancing HRE on campus and beyond.

Human Rights in Higher Education

The United Nations defines HRE as:

all educational, training, information, awareness-raising, and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms and thus contributing, inter alia, to the prevention of human rights violations and abuses by providing persons with knowledge, skills and understand and developing their attitudes and behaviours, to empower them to contribute to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights. (United Nations General Assembly 2011, Article 2.1)

A newfound respect for HRE has emerged within the past 30 years as human rights educators push for the inclusion of HRE in school and university curricula. In the United States, for instance, researchers realized that public schools offered lessons linked to specific subtopics such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Holocaust, but failed to teach students about the international human rights system and its impact on their lives. HRE advocates argued that the systematic integration of human rights needed to become part of American classrooms (Tibbitts 2015, 9–10). During this time, human rights educators also began linking rights to social change efforts and challenging the assumption that HRE belonged solely within the purview of lawyers (Tibbitts 2015, 5). United Nations programs such as the World Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2005) and the World Program for Human Rights Education promoted HRE in primary and second schools, as well as within higher education, while organizations such as Human Rights Education Associates (HREA) developed teaching and learning materials to share with educators (Tibbitts 2015, 12; see also Human Rights Education Associates, n.d.). This growing recognition, as exemplified by UN initiatives, “have given national HRE planners a sense of solidarity and direction by delineating human rights education as a field of inquiry capable of standing on its own, apart from such other educational frameworks as civic education and peace education ” (Holland and Martin 2014, 3–4). In 2011, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the importance of HRE by adopting the Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. The Declaration asserts that HRE represents a “lifelong process that concerns all ages” that encompasses the provision of knowledge related to human rights norms, principles, and protection mechanisms; learning and teaching in ways that respect both educators and learners; and empowering people to enjoy and exercise their rights while respecting and upholding the rights of others (United Nations General Assembly 2011, Articles 2.2 and Article 3.1). Indeed, the UN has promoted HRE as a preventative tool aimed at strengthening respect for human rights norms (Gerber 2013). HRE programs in post-conflict zones such as Sierra Leone, Mexico, and Peru focus on issues such as promoting women’s rights and fighting patriarchal values, protecting child laborers, and increasing access to justice and rights education (Holland and Martin 2014; see also Holland and Martin 2017). In U.S. schools such as San Francisco International High School, educators have integrated HRE into high school curricula serving immigrant and refugee students to validate their lived experiences and help them connect to their new communities (Fix and Clifford 2015, 129–130).

Yet despite growing support for HRE, human rights educators continue to face challenges when it comes to integrating human rights into curricula and building new programs. It is noteworthy, for instance, that the U.S. government has been slow to integrate HRE into its public school system and lags behind fellow UN members in developing and promoting HRE approaches. Possible explanations for this hesitancy include U.S. “exceptionalism”—which implies that rights violations occur in faraway places, but not in the United States—and a neoliberal, market-economy approach to education that frames HRE as a commodity rather than a fundamental right (Katz and Spero 2015, 18–20). These problems are exacerbated within higher education, where faculty members interested in human rights and social justice often lament the lack of political and financial support devoted to HRE. Existing university human rights centers are frequently highlighted in university promotional materials but nevertheless must run on shoestring budgets and with limited, if any, core faculty members. At the majority of universities, human rights may be addressed as a supplemental lesson or two—or perhaps one elective course—within international relations, legal studies, or sociology programs. Educators hoping to integrate human rights into preexisting courses find that HRE resources usually aim too low (toward grade-school learners) or too high (toward law students), failing to account for undergraduate students seeking HRE beyond introductory lessons on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

With such discrepancy in mind, it is vital for faculty and higher education administrators to consider how institutions can meaningfully advance the goals of HRE. Indeed, this book offers opportunities to implement and advance HRE at the institutional, classroom, and community levels of our colleges and universities.

Institution Building

Human rights in higher education requires institutions that not only support HRE in the curricula, but also integrate rights-based norms in their governance structures and university priorities. Some scholars contend that higher education is best viewed as a “public good ” that encompasses social benefits beyond mere individual and economic gains; higher education as a public good strengthens the public relationship between educational systems and broader society (Chambers 2005, 4). “In essence the public good can become the underlying link that ties faculty work together in ways that can meaningfully meet institutional needs and needs of the public,” writes Kelly Ward (2005). “[T]he ‘public good ’ can become an organizing scheme for a faculty member to organize his or her work where teaching, research, and service roles can be carried out in ways that are mindful of communities beyond the campus and discipline” (224). This commitment to social responsibility is frequently echoed by school teachers, as well; one study found that 95% of U.S. teachers expressed support for infusing social justice in teacher preparation programs, as well as making social justice a mandatory topic in public school classrooms (Baltodano 2006). Marta P. Baltodano (2009) writes that society—including schools—continues to reproduce social inequalities despite these commitments, in part, because of lack of understanding about the philosophical principles underpinning social justice and its connections to the global economy (273). She recommends making the study of social justice a mandatory subject from kindergarten through university, with the aim of infusing school curricula with the basic tenets of history, political economy, human rights, and advocacy (274).

Yet critics warn that neoliberal policies and trends—which emphasize individualism and consumerism, downplaying the value of intellectual involvement in public policy debates and decision-making—serve to undermine universities as sites of democratic learning and social activism (Hyslop-Margison and Savarese 2012, 51–52). “In spite of their traditional, if somewhat romanticized, role as the gatekeepers of intellectual freedom , universities have drifted rapidly toward serving the instrumental demands of the marketplace,” write Emery Hyslop-Margison and Josephine L. Savarese (2012). “Faced with huge public financing reductions, universities increasingly focus on technical training programs and ubiquitous credentialising rather than on creating informed and engaged democratic citizens” (54). Indeed, Adrianna J. Kezar (2005a) argues that the “social charter” between higher education and society is being rewritten as public institutions are being encouraged to become for-profit entities “with economic engines and with private and economic rather than public and social goals…The broader notion of social accountability (such as preservation of knowledge or development of the arts) has been thinned down and replaced with responsiveness to the market” (24). In response, Hyslop-Margison and Savarese (2012) contend that “concerned academics no longer have the luxury of intellectual isolation and political inaction but must instead confront the present situation in manifest ways” (52). This includes challenging government meddling in university governance and the under-funding of higher education, as well as removing the institutional control of the “managerial class” over universities (Hyslop-Margison and Savarese 2012, 52). In Missouri, for instance, State Representative Rick Brattin introduced a 2017 bill to eliminate tenure at the state’s public colleges and universities. Brattin argued that House Bill 266 was necessary to ensure that professors focused on training students to find jobs after graduation, rather than “going off the rails” and failing to emphasize “real-world application and betterment of their life skills” (Zamudio-Suaréz 2017). 2 This attack on the tenure system—which Brattin called “un-American”—reflects a wider “mission shift” from public–social ideals to private–economic goals that impact core activities of higher education (Kezar 2005a, 26). This shift includes corporatized governance and leadership , vocationalized curriculum, the commercialization of research, disenfranchised faculty, careerist students who focus on future employment without consideration of the public good , and the devaluation of academics values such as public service, academic freedom , and the value of truth (Kezar 2005a, 26–38).

In response to these challenges, advocates of HRE stress the need to build strong institutions that recognize the value of social responsibility in terms of public good , as well as to contribute to quality research and teaching. For instance, some scholars argue that this requires universities to redefine faculty roles. Traditional measures that emphasize academic research and publishing, as well as internal teaching and service, often inhibit campus efforts to connect to outside communities and serve external needs (Ward 2005: 219). The institutional demands of contemporary faculty, including the peer review process, have been criticized for damaging the “agency and political activism of young academics,” creating a “bureaucratic mechanism to force academic deference to the prevailing conservative institutional culture” (Hyslop-Margison and Savarese 2012, 56). Ultimately professors are limited in their abilities to pursue community work unless internal policies permit and reward faculty work that supports the public good —and do not jeopardize their jobs, status, research agendas, or teaching interests (Ward 2005, 232). Institutions around the world are increasingly responding to these challenges by reconceptualizing their ideas about community engagement , service learning, and engaged scholarship (Holland 2005, 246). Some U.S. institutions, including Webster University, have adopted the “Boyer Model ” to expand the notion of scholarship into four aspects: discovery (aligns with traditional research), integration (expands on research by bringing new insights through integration and interdisciplinarity), application (connects knowledge with social problems), and teaching (links teaching with the transmission of knowledge, as well as the transformation and extension of it) (Boyer 1990; see also Ward 2005, 227). The Boyer Model —which can be used in faculty reviews, including reviews for faculty tenure and promotion—provides opportunities for faculty engagement and success that move beyond traditional models that undervalue social justice and community engagement . This shift can benefit faculty and communities, as well as build opportunities for student learning. By making faculty research more applicable to community needs, for instance, faculty can take on topics that are important to the discipline as well as broader society; this includes involving community members in the research process , from start to finish, as well as sharing findings in ways that are meaningful to those stakeholders (Ward 2005, 221–222). This research, combined with good teaching, is the foundation for high-quality engaged scholarship . “Engaged scholarship is not additive or extra work; linking it to service creates the impression that this is a new and additional burden on faculty,” argues Barbara A. Holland (2005). “Rather, it is an integrated form of research and teaching that gives scholarly work a public purpose and gives faculty and students access to public sources of expertise” (250).

Unfortunately, internal and external stereotypes within higher education often stymie institutional change and growth in support of HRE. As long as traditional research is seen as the ideal model, “there is little opportunity to generate academic legitimacy and prestige for other types of institutions that find engagement much more compatible and profitable with their particular and very different missions and strengths” (Holland 2005, 242–243). Indeed, “the lack of greater interest in engaged scholarship among more elite institutions has a critical dampening effect on wider institutionalization of engagement by raising persistent questions that fail to consider what has been learned and documented about engagement” (Holland 2005, 254). This volume draws from experiences at Webster University—an institution that some scholars might identify as of “lesser” value than high-prestige research universities due to our emphasis on teaching and community engagement . While the aim of this body of work is to benefit a diverse array of higher education institutions, in practice these lessons will likely be more useful to liberal arts colleges and small universities where “publish or perish” is not a way of life. This is regrettable, since engaged scholarship may fulfill academic missions in innovative new ways—including within the realm of academic research—if scholars are willing to pursue intellectual strategies that are sometimes viewed as risky. With these challenges in mind, the authors of this volume offer their perspectives on institution building in the hopes that it will spur genuine dialogue and a growing commitment to HRE.

In the Classroom

College classrooms are sites of learning where students may be challenged to consider human rights problems, inspired to pursue social justice in their communities, and empowered with the skills necessary for advocacy and scholarship. Scholars increasingly call on higher education to act as a public resource, emphasizing active teaching strategies that use the classroom to prepare students for civic life, on campus and beyond (Ward 2005, 220). Benjamin Gregg (2014) argues that college students might gain a “human rights consciousness ” in university classrooms that reflects a particular cognitive style; one that “can be taught to college students and, to the extent that at least some of these students eventually participate in political movements of one sort or another, contribute to human rights-relevant forms of social justice ” (253–254). He writes that such a cognitive style reflected by human rights is a particular type of political style that seeks to recognize and value all individuals through political action (255). According to Gregg (2014), higher education is a logical place to grow such a human rights consciousness . The college classroom “is peculiarly dedicated to careful thought, probing analysis, and daring imagination,” providing students with the chance to examine social and political controversies—including human rights themselves, which have always been controversial—as a basis for bettering politics in the future (256).

This consciousness is not limited to a particular academic discipline, but rather encourages HRE from a variety of perspectives. In history classrooms, for instance, learning from past events can strengthen current struggles for social justice . “Whoever seeks to act for change, should also consider consulting the successful processes of emancipation and the acquisition of rights,” notes Martin Lücke (2016, 49). From this perspective, history learning imbued with HRE can critique power structures, visualize the forgotten, and empower marginalized groups (Lücke 2016, 48–49). In order to combine HRE with an academic discipline such as history, educators should not simply add topics or methods to existing programs but rather “embrace two educational approaches in every aspect and phase of teaching” (Engel et al. 2016, 68). This requires combining core principles, learning objectives, methods, and content to enable students to develop a “consciousness of change” that is informed both by history (the realization that social change happened in the past and is thus possible) and human rights (envisioning and creating change to realize human rights in the present) (Engel et al. 2016, 68). Advocates of “African-centered learning ” contend that classes must confront historical realities—including tools and effects of exploitation stemming from slavery and colonialism—to seek paths toward the elimination of discrimination (Byrd and Jangu 2009). Relatedly, proponents of peace education further stress the need for “integrated approaches to peace that are personal, communal, and global”—including exploring the root causes of war, violence , and hatred (Andrzejewski 2009, 99–100). This melding of human rights with other academic disciplines is made possible, in part, by providing educators with the knowledge and resources necessary to offer HRE in their classrooms. In his work on teacher education, Todd Jennings (2009) argues that standard setting and training is necessary for meaningful human rights learning. The hopeful outcome is that students “will frame and critique their own actions from a human rights perspective,” as well as critique the actions of social institutions such as governments and corporations (66). “While it is important that individuals see that human rights violations are committed, or deterred, by the actions of individuals and groups it is equally important that they understand the potential roles of social structures in allowing human rights violations to go unnoticed and unchallenged,” he writes (66).

Although the authors of this volume stress that HRE is vital throughout higher education, it is worthwhile to note its immense potential for serving underprivileged student groups. Community colleges and a variety of universities—including Webster University—often serve large populations of first-generation students or “non-traditional” students such as older adults, ethnic minorities, and working mothers. Lindsay Padilla (2015), who teaches at a community college, writes that her students are most likely to face human rights violations in their own lives and would most benefit from a “holistic, action-oriented pedagogy ” that includes robust service-learning programs (172). “With the most to gain from human rights recognition, these populations are more equipped to claim their rights if they know why they are excluded,” she argues (170). “By emphasizing critical thinking , authentic dialogue, and creativity, HRE and service learning provide a worldview of emancipation necessary for restoring our humanness and assisting students in becoming agents of change” (Padilla 2015, 177). Yet she also notes that these lofty goals require fundamental changes—not just one or two required human rights classes, or the celebration of a thematic month that reifies and objectifies culture and rights. Instead, it necessitates a college curriculum that not only discusses human rights, but also works on “making human dignity a world reality” (Padilla 2015, 178).

Community Approaches

The integration of HRE into institutions of higher learning and college classrooms further requires support for social justice at the broader community level. Critics have argued that higher education often does not take the knowledge and skills invested in teaching and research into the communities where academic institutions are situated; they fail to provide broader social benefits related to pervasive problems such poverty, homelessness, and health care (Kezar 2005b, 44). In response, a growing movement toward citizenship education and HRE aims at enhancing community–university partnerships , but this time accounting for diversity within communities that has been historically ignored. “Students need to learn how to engage different types of people—the capacity to engage, respect, and negotiate the claims of multiple and disparate communities and voices is critical to being civically literate,” writes Kezar (2005b, 45–46). Examples of this “emerging vision” for higher education—which is based on collaborative, community-oriented enterprises that hold the public good above public, individual interests—include the organization of learning communities, which cluster classes around an interdisciplinary theme and enroll a common cohort of students (Kezar 2005b, 48). A longitudinal study of Webster University’s “Social Engagement ” learning community , for instance, found that academic community building around themes such as “human rights” and “social movements” created frameworks for future activism and study. Researchers found that most freshmen respondents lacked basic human rights knowledge and an activist orientation , yet their empathy and perspective-taking abilities provided foundations for building human rights awareness and promoting social justice with the support of HRE initiatives (Kingston et al. 2014). For educators committed to building community approaches to human rights learning, universities are not limited to engaging in intellectual curiosity—but instead should take on real-world problem solving. Research universities such as the University of Pennsylvania have the ability to address pressing issues related to the right to health, for instance, by supporting service learning initiatives through its Sayre Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Center (see Benson et al. 2005).

Indeed, awareness of HRE has prompted an interest in the practice of academic service learning . Beginning in the early 1980s, educational and political leaders began calling for more youth involvement within the community, citing the need for young people to understand their rights and responsibilities toward each other. Like HRE and the ideal of global citizenship , the practice of service learning emphasizes rights awareness (including understanding the relationship between individual rights and the public good ) and a sense of social responsibility (Kinsley and McPherson 1995, 3–7). Academic service learning is a pedagogical model that integrates academic learning and relevant community service. It is, first and foremost, a teaching methodology; it requires the integration of experiential and academic learning so that these two practices strengthen and inform each other. This presupposes that service learning simply will not happen unless there is a concerted effort to strategically bridge what is learned in the classroom with what is learned in the field, or community. Therefore, service experiences must be relevant to a student’s academic course of study (Howard 1998, 22). Most definitions of service learning have two common threads: separation and integration. The mission of higher education comprises three duties (research, teaching, and service), and service learning is a way to overcome the separation between these goals. It combines community work with classroom instruction and prepares students to participate in public life, thereby integrating theory and practice (Speck 2001, 4–5).

Service learning is not the same as volunteerism, but rather it represents a teaching methodology that stresses equal partnerships with community stakeholders. On the community side, students provide meaningful service work that meets a need or goal, as defined by a community/organization. On campus, however, service must flow from and into course objectives and be integrated into courses through assignments that require some form of reflection. Assignments and service are assessed and evaluated accordingly (Weigert 1998, 6–7). If students are treated simply as volunteers but not service learners, their experiences are often limited to activities that only match their current abilities; they are not challenged in ways that meet their educational objectives (Bell and Carlson 2009, 21). Yet organizations that take service learners have their own missions and goals to pursue. “We’re not an educational agency, so the main point for us—we’re glad that they’re learning, but we’re really focused on the service that we’re getting from them,” said an NGO staff member. “If it’s more about them, then it’s not really worth it for us to do it because it ends up diverting energy away from our mission” (quoted in Garcia et al. 2009, 55). This perspective also addresses criticism about service learning ’s potential to exploit poor communities as free sources of education and use the “charity model” to reinforce negative stereotypes and students’ perceptions of the poor as being helpless (Stoecker and Tryon 2009, 3). There are several contributing factors to these criticisms; for instance, while many organization staff members are willing to view themselves as learners and to see learning as a collective activity, many faculty members are more inclined to think of themselves as experts who impart knowledge to students and agencies rather than being true learning partners (see Bacon 2002). As a result, some academic institutions fail to adequately consult with the community about needs, goals, and strategies. Service learning programs must therefore not only benefit the community, but also challenge students in ways that extend beyond traditional conceptions of volunteerism.

Outline of This Book

The remainder of this book is devoted to putting HRE theory and norms into practice. Drawing from our experiences as human rights educators, my colleagues and I offer lessons and practical reflections on engaging in HRE and social justice work in higher education. The book is divided into three parts: institutional, classroom, and community approaches.

I begin Part I’s emphasis on institutional approaches by arguing that educators have a responsibility to provide students with the knowledge and critical reasoning skills necessary for human rights advocacy —and that university HRE ought to take place on campuses where commitment to social justice is a defining characteristic (Chapter 2: “The Ideal of a Human Rights Campus ”). My calls to include HRE in undergraduate programs and throughout campus life have taken on new urgency in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in an age of increasingly polarized politics and growing rhetoric against fundamental freedoms. Reflecting on my experiences directing the undergraduate International Human Rights (HRTS) program at Webster University—one of only a handful of human rights degree programs in the United States—I offer advice for building HRE foundations based on critical thinking and social engagement , for fostering inclusiveness on campus, and for supporting social justice every day.

In Chapter 3 (“Social Justice Programs and Just Administrative Practices”), Kate Parsons draws on 18 years of administrative involvement in interdisciplinary, social justice programs to offer tips for developing and sustaining more just, effective, and anti-discriminatory administrative practices. While faculty members who support these programs have become adept at creating curricular and cocurricular programs to support and enhance interdisciplinary social justice for their students, relatively little attention is paid to the ways in which faculty relationships with one another inadvertently replicate social injustices, ultimately running counter to the goals of achieving equitable and sustainable faculty participation. Concentrating on three governance components—mission, leadership , and committee composition—Parsons helps faculty members reflect on their own structures, assumptions and practices, offering strategies for decreasing faculty and programmatic vulnerability and increasing sustainability.

In Chapter 4 (“Faculty–Student Collaborative Human Rights Research”), Danielle MacCartney discusses the use of collaborative faculty–student research to extend the reach of HRE while promoting faculty scholarship and deepening student learning and engagement. Supervising independent student research or collaborating with students on human rights research holds many challenges, particularly for educators carrying heavy teaching loads or strict disciplinary expectations for research productivity. As a professor at a teaching-focused university, MacCartney argues that pairing her research with teaching is advantageous for herself, as well as for her undergraduates. Using her experiences creating a student research conference and research-driven study abroad experiences to countries such as Ghana, MacCartney considers collaborative faculty–student research as a tool for effective HRE, the benefits of collaboration for students and faculty, and the role that academic administration can play to help overcome some of the challenges of engaging in collaborative faculty–student research .

Offering a final institutional approach, Bethany R. Keller examines how student life programming can contribute to creating a more welcoming, inclusive, and culturally -aware campus that supports student success in Chapter 5 (“Supporting Inclusive Campus Communities: A Student Development Perspective”). This chapter draws from important lessons learned within the Multicultural Center and International Student Affairs (MCISA) at Webster University. The importance of cultural programming, specialized orientation , strategic collaborations, and effective support services cannot be overstated in creating a culture of inclusion for meeting diverse student needs. Keller argues that the most successful programs are those designed to engage throughout the intellectual network of campus. She further contends that building intentional opportunities for diverse student groups to engage with one another through programs with cultural and human rights themes can advance intercultural learning.

Part II centers on classroom approaches to HRE and begins with Amanda M. Rosen’s discussion of a unique undergraduate course called “Real World Survivor: Experiencing Poverty at Heifer Ranch .” In Chapter 6 (“Real-World Survivor: Simulating Poverty to Teach Human Rights and Sustainable Development ”), she outlines a team-taught course that combines academic content on the United Nations’ Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals with skill-building exercises and experiential learning . The course incorporates innovative pedagogical elements such as the flipped classroom, games, simulations, and problem-based learning, as well as a three-day experiential simulation on hunger and poverty at Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas. Students produce short videos advocating for action on various issues, using recordings and reflections from their experiences. Highlighting various measurement data, Rosen notes that participants in this course broadly achieve the course learning outcomes , including greater levels of empathy and a desire to improve the situation of poor and oppressed people around the world.

In Chapter 7 (“Context Alters Perception: The Importance of Travel in Human Rights Education”), Elizabeth J. Sausele acknowledges that colleges and universities are filled with passionate students who often want to change the world. In the field of human rights, however, these good intentions can devolve into the pitfalls of the privileged seeking to “save” the less fortunate. Using a hybrid human rights areas studies course focused on Rwanda as an example, Sausele contends that the critical skill of understanding context is essential for bridging personal conceptions to the reality of the “other.” She outlines the importance of travel for providing a foundational understanding of contextual comprehension, and highlights how this can be included in curricular design. She also offers lessons learned about the essentials of traveling abroad with students and considers institutional challenges for undertaking such projects.

In Chapter 8 (“Creating a Trauma Sensitive Environment for Teaching Human Rights”), Kelly A. McBride provides context and practical guidance for human rights educators seeking to create a trauma-sensitive classroom environment. This is extremely important for HRE, since its unique curriculum creates an increased risk for students becoming distressed by intense subject matter. Yet these practices can and should be implemented across the university setting in general, since many students (and their professors) have experienced trauma and may be triggered and/or re-traumatized in the absence of strategies to prevent emotional triggering and re-traumatization. As a mental health professional and a human rights educator, McBride discusses the globalized student population in the United States, the impacts of experiencing trauma and how they present themselves in the classroom, and steps toward creating a trauma-sensitive environment.

Bill Barrett concludes the section on classroom approaches with Chapter 9 (“What Do You Think You’re Looking At? The Responsibility of the Gaze”), arguing that the role of photography as an instrument for understanding human rights is worthy of exploration, with the aim of enhancing HRE in responsible, ethical ways. Media of visual communication can be used broadly, but students of human rights must critically examine the purpose, and potential consequences, of how images are used. His chapter outlines the key issues inherent to imagery in HRE, as well as resources for educators to use visual media for advancing human rights learning. It uses photographic case studies from recent sites of conflict and human rights abuse, as well as his personal experiences as a documentary photographer, to investigate ethical issues and explore the possibilities for combining photographic expression with HRE.

Part III turns the conversation toward community approaches to HRE and begins with Julie Setele’s Chapter 10, (“Education as Resistance: Teaching Critical Criminology to (Aspiring) Cops”), as she reflects on her experiences teaching critical criminology to aspiring (and active) police officers. Because she teaches about the social world, the subject matter of her courses is inherently political. In criminology and criminal justice courses, for instance, students consider how crime rates are not unbiased reflections of reality, but rather the product of socio-legal definitions of crime and complex institutional decisions to police certain “crimes ” and not others. It is perhaps not surprising that the (disproportionately White) students who enter her classes intending to join law enforcement do not always appreciate her perspective; indeed, she has faced considerable backlash for teaching about issues of police brutality and equality before the law. Her chapter thus examines the challenges of being an HRE educator while also maintaining a semi-public role as an activist.

In Chapter 11 (“Human Rights Conferences and Facilitating Community Dialogue”), I partner with two former students—Monica Henson and Evelyn Whitehead—to share our experiences coordinating Webster University’s Annual Human Rights Conference . We contend that universities offer the potential for organizing high-impact events—including human rights conferences —that can serve as community outlets of human rights knowledge and dialogue. These events can not only bring outside human rights experts into new communities, but they can also situate the university as a hub of HRE in their city and/or region. We argue that faculty members and students can build HRE within their communities while enhancing educational opportunities on campus. To that end, the chapter offers advice and lessons learned to help event coordinators at other institutions.

In Chapter 12 (“Community-Based Social Justice Work: The WILLOW Project”), Anne Geraghty-Rathert highlights possibilities for melding the theoretical study of law with its practical application for engaging in social justice work. By combining classroom study with community pro bono outreach, undergraduate students gain useful skills for their future careers while learning important lessons about human rights and equality before the law. At Webster University, student interns work on a clemency project called the WILLOW Project (Women Initiate Legal Lifelines to Other Women ). This Project represents three women, all incarcerated due to violence perpetrated by their batterers and not by themselves. The issues of domestic violence and wrongful conviction inherent in the WILLOW Project’s work resonate with students and offer them opportunities to hone vital skills for engaging in social justice and human rights protection.

Relatedly, in Chapter 13 (“The Bijlmer Project : Moving the classroom into our community to combat Human Trafficking ”), Sheetal Shah explores the value of taking classrooms into the community in order to engage in social justice work. She uses the example of the Bijlmer Project , a grassroots project in Amsterdam , the Netherlands , that combines the expertise of professional partners and academics to address the vulnerability of survivors of sex trafficking. Through their involvement with the Bijlmer Project , undergraduate and graduate students gain an enhanced understanding of psychology , human rights, and international affairs—all while recognizing the inequalities happening within their own city. Indeed, human rights to health, education, and physical security take on new importance when students witness the impacts of rights violations—and also when they have an opportunity to combat and confront these problems firsthand. Additionally, students expand their research and advocacy skills, gaining practical experience for future study and action.

Lastly, the book concludes with additional resources for engaging in similar HRE and social justice work at other universities. These resources, and the experiences highlighted throughout this edited volume, offer opportunities for educators to promote HRE—and inspire positive change—in their institutions, in their classrooms, and in their communities.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Founded in 1915, Webster University is a private non-profit university with nearly 17,000 students studying at campuses in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as online (Webster University, n.d.-c). Its home campus is in Saint Louis, Missouri—which is also the site of the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. As the director of the Institute, I oversee Webster’s academic program in International Human Rights (HRTS) with the support of faculty fellows (including a number of contributors to this volume; see Webster University, n.d.-a). Central to Webster’s mission is an emphasis on “global citizenship ,” with much institutional support for study abroad and social justice initiatives (Webster University, n.d.-b).

  2. 2.

    Notably, many advocates HRE contend that educators must have a variety of protections—including the tenure system—in order to meaningfully engage in human rights work. In her work on K-16 social justice education, Baltodano (2009) argues: “To move away from education that reproduces oppression and inequalities, environmental destruction, and military expansionism, teachers must be free to provide emancipatory education for a better world. Teachers must have certain protections to do this” (281). Those protections include free choice in work, safe and healthy working conditions, fair wages and pay equity, equality in tenure and promotion, rights to organize and form unions, access to affordable health care and other forms of assistance (such as affordable day care), and the ability to enjoy academic freedom (281–282).