The Institute for Global Human Rights A Whitepaper for the Campaign Steering Committee

Transcription

1 The Institute for Global Human Rights A Whitepaper for the Campaign Steering Committee THE VISION The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in the shadow of the horrors of the Second World War, affirmed the principle that all people have dignity and rights because they are human beings. This idea the human rights idea has become the guiding concept of our time, a touchstone for our common humanity, and an internationally recognized language of justice. While great strides have been made in promoting and defending human rights over the last seventy years, more human beings are enslaved around the world than at any other time in the past, 15 million women will be married as children this year, and 65 million people are living as refugees, having been forced to flee their homelands by war and conflict an historically unprecedented number that will double within the next two decades. Among those who have been displaced by violence or have faced the violation of their human rights are our neighbors, colleagues, and students. Over the last century, California has been a refuge for Armenian survivors of genocide, European Jewish scientists, musicians and actors escaping Nazi persecution, and South East Asians and Iraqis fleeing generations of war and oppression. At the same time, our state has witnessed moments of terrible rights violations: the systematic destruction of Native American communities, the internment of Japanese Americans at Manzanar, and the exploitation of Central Valley Mexican and Filipino American farm workers. In our new century, we face ongoing human rights challenges posed by the presence in our state of millions of undocumented people, refugee newcomers traumatized by mass atrocity, environmental degradation, and rising inequality. Global climate change, novel forms of technology, and extremist ideologies have also created new threats to the very viability of the human rights idea. Human rights are at the center of the greatest challenges of our time. Access to food and clean water, economic inequality, lack of educational opportunity, poor healthcare, political disempowerment, and sexual and gender-based violence are always linked to a lack of recognition of people s basic human rights. That is why social, economic or agricultural development programs, health initiatives, and humanitarian and educational assistance must be matched by an equally strong engagement with human rights in order to foster democratic, peaceful, and sustainable change. By integrating the human rights idea into UC Davis s core mission, we will uphold them as a fundamental tenet of our collective academic, research and public service efforts. Incorporating human rights in this way will make our already strong programs more responsive and effective; it will ensure that these will continue to reflect our common ideals and values. We will send a clear message that UC Davis, as one of the world s leading public universities, understands that building a just and humane future depends on the respect and promotion of human rights for all. The Institute for Global Human Rights at UC Davis will be the first in the United States to bring the full force of a leading public research university to bear on contemporary challenges to human rights throughout the world. The institute will stand as an elemental pillar in the university s global footprint, cultivating research and innovation in human rights thought and action in diverse arenas and across the colleges: the right to healthcare and well-being; the right to food, water, and sustainable development; the right to work; the right to culture; the right to education; and the right to know one s history. We will change the world by educating a new generation of leaders who will take their knowledge of, expertise in, and commitment to the human rights idea with them as they embark on careers in government and public service, international development and humanitarian relief, business, industry, law, and education.

2 Interdisciplinary research will focus on building a bridge between past and present to innovate forwardlooking frameworks that bring the wealth of our collective expertise to bear on urgent human rights need. The institute will develop research tools and methods to answer current challenges as well as anticipate and prepare for emerging problems. As the institute grows in prominence and reputation, UC Davis will provide global leadership and guidance when communities, states, and organizations seek human rights solutions in the fields of humanitarian assistance, truth and reconciliation, transitional justice, global health, agricultural development, energy, transportation, and food. From the very start, the institute will be the first of its kind to make possible the systematic integration of science and engineering expertise into human rights questions and problems. This approach will provide a unique opportunity for our STEM students to pursue the study of human rights from within their own disciplines, and then apply that knowledge through field-based internships and group projects around the globe. Moreover, our faculty have responded to the war in Syria with research and initiatives to assist refugee university students and scholars, establishing UC Davis as the world leader in this critical aspect of broader humanitarian relief. This work has brought our university into collaboration with major international philanthropic and intergovernmental organizations to help not just those young people affected by this war, but to better prepare, as well, the international community and global higher education to help those who will face similar hardship in conflicts and emergencies just over the horizon. The human rights idea serves as the blueprint for humanity s way forward and out of our current morass of violence, ideologies of hate, and injustice. The institute will serve as a model for how a major public research institution can implement that blueprint. It will embrace intellectual complexity and ambiguity, but clarify what is meant by global citizenship, and make certain that our students no matter where they come from in the world leave our university knowing the value UC Davis places on human rights as practical demonstration of our shared humanity. THE RIGHT TIME AND THE RIGHT PLACE The 21 st century has brought with it a host of complex and tough challenges to human rights. War, political upheaval, conflicts over water, and economic and climate change-driven migration and displacement will only intensify in coming years. At the same time, at UC Davis, undergraduate and graduate enrollments in courses like Genocide; Human Rights in Latin America; and Human Rights, Gender, and Sexuality have increased annually since the launch, in 2010, of the interdisciplinary program in Human Rights Studies (the only academic program similar to a department of its kind in the University of California system). Our students are eager to prepare themselves to shoulder the burden of solving human rights problems through their courses of study here and abroad, through research collaborations with faculty, and in local and international internships. In short, they have taken the lead in showing us ways to think and live the human rights idea both in the classroom and beyond. At the moment, there are no comprehensive, interdisciplinary human rights research institutes at top-tier universities on the West Coast, and certainly none that seek to build bridges among law, the humanities, the social sciences, engineering and scientific disciplines in the way we intend to do here. The time is right to leverage UC Davis unique strengths in agriculture, environmental sciences, engineering, law, the social sciences, and the humanities to build the next component of UC Davis global footprint. In the near term, UC Davis will be able to conduct research and innovation on issues such as logistical humanitarian needs, refugee higher education access and mobility, the nexus of environmental policy and human rights, and the prevention of mass rape and genocide. In the long term, the university will achieve international leadership through impactful and effective outcomes in a variety of contexts where human rights violations occur, as well as by showing how critical the protection and promotion of human rights are to the STEM fields. Equally, the institute s work will affirm the value of a university-wide approach to some of the most difficult problems facing humanity. 2

3 THE OPPORTUNITY Scott is a junior majoring in Biochemistry who, after taking the Human Rights Studies summer course in Chile, decides to pursue a minor in Human Rights Studies. As he deepens his involvement with institute events and student activities, he switches his post-graduation plans from going directly into medical school to serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin. Upon his return he plans to pursue a joint MSN/MPH program and a career in public international service. Sofía s family moved to Los Angeles to flee violence in El Salvador. The great-grandparents of her friend and classmate Arda, whom she met in the Human Rights Studies course on comparative genocide, emigrated from the Ottoman Empire to Fresno because of the Armenian Genocide during World War One. Their family histories drew both of them to a quarter abroad program in Germany, where they visited Auschwitz in Poland and studied how the Holocaust has been commemorated in museum exhibits. Together they decide to collaborate on an exhibition about California refugee communities with the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, in the process learning how to conduct and archive oral histories, foster dialogue between students and community members from diverse backgrounds, and innovate new ways to preserve public memory. Arjun is an International Relations doctoral student who is interested in the rights of abandoned and orphaned children, especially those whose parents have died from HIV/AIDS. One of his Human Rights Studies professors introduces him to a College of Engineering professor whom he would have otherwise never met and who is interested in how better design, landscaping and architecture can improve conditions in orphanages. Through their work together, he not only gains a deeper understanding of the technical problems orphanages face in developing countries. They go on to collaborate through the institute to organize a series of workshops and site visits for engineers, social workers, and human rights professionals to rethink orphanage design so that it better reflects the protections of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. He is developing these ideas further as a Physicians for Human Rights postdoc at the institute. Lilith is a Gender, Sexuality, and Women s Studies major whose parents are Iraqi immigrants. After minoring in Human Rights Studies, focusing in particular on refugee studies, she applies for a junior practitioner grant from the institute to support her travel and living expenses in Beirut, Lebanon, where faculty from the Human Rights Studies program have connected her with a local NGO that runs an elementary school for Syrian refugee children. After teaching in that program for several months, and blogging about her experiences on the institute s student website, she returns to Sacramento to work fulltime as a program officer in the International Rescue Committee s refugee resettlement program. While Scott, Sofía, Arda, Lilith and Arjun are composites, they encapsulate some of the opportunities, insights, experiences and outcomes that real UC Davis students have already had through their engagement with Human Rights Studies and can have with the establishment of the institute. The institute will be the principal hub for incubating, supporting, coordinating, and promoting faculty and student research across the university on human rights and its attendant fields: these include, but are not limited to, humanitarianism, environmental justice, genocide, mass sexual and gender-based violence, refugee studies, memory studies and post-conflict transitional justice. Elevating the program s vital work and showcasing it in a unique space, one that is distinct from any individual college or school, will enable UC Davis to fulfill its shared responsibility to play a leading role in human rights study, teaching and action. When humanity faces serious issues like those that the institute will address, any progress will be incremental but every increment we move forward makes a difference in millions of lives. The institute will take an active role in policy guidance and formulation, as well as outreach and education. It will accomplish this task through the work of four research centers. Faculty affiliated with 3

4 these centers will oversee a series of undergraduate and graduate programs, including the undergraduate Human Rights major and minor, professional and academic graduate certificates, a research journal, terminal master s degree programs, designated graduate emphases and a doctoral program. Physically locating the following four centers within the institute will create unprecedented opportunities for students and scholars to pursue collaborative research: The Center for Human Rights, Science, and Technology Technology, science, and engineering must stand at the forefront of addressing society-wide violations of rights and identifying lasting solutions to human rights problems. From the identification of mass graves by forensic anthropologists, to logistical support for refugee events, to deploying Big Data in order to better understand problems like climate change, the crosspollination of science and technology with the defense of rights is a critical void that UC Davis is uniquely positioned to fill. Furthermore, engineering and science provide technologies and methods to establish basic truth, empower women and children, and provide equal and equitable access to information. This center would ground human rights in the methodologies of the sciences and engineering, while providing a platform for engineers and scientists to collaborate with practitioners, human rights lawyers, and those in the arts and humanities in ways that do not exist anywhere else in the U.S. higher education landscape. The Mass Atrocity and Genocide Studies Center This center will be unique in the country because of its clear emphasis on violence against women, children, and disadvantaged peoples, and because of its remarkable capacity to bring together artists and humanistic scholars from an array of disciplines with those engaging in policy, museology, and practical applications of international human rights and humanitarian law. Aside from studying past atrocities and how to prevent future atrocities, the center would seek to have real world impact in two key ways: First, the center would develop pedagogical methodologies and tools for helping teachers at the high school and university levels, both in California and abroad, to teach effectively on human rights, atrocity and memory. Second, the center would work with communities of survivors of genocide and mass violence within California, including members of the Jewish community, Armenians, Native Americans, Latin Americans and South East Asians to understand connections between past violence and their lives in California. The emphasis on Californians experience with crimes against humanity and mass violence would give our center a critical rooting within which to acknowledge past suffering but also celebrate the resiliency and survival of our fellow Californians. The Center for the Study of the Refugee In the near future, up to two percent of the people on the planet will be refugees fleeing war, rape, enslavement, violence, extremist ideologies, natural disaster, and social upheaval. As recent global events demonstrate, no part of the world has been left untouched by flows of people seeking safety and refuge. Refugees pose an essential challenge to the concepts of human rights and democracy: they are people who, in practical terms, often do not have any access to human rights, but who need those rights the most if they are to survive and find safety. By foregrounding the humanity of the refugee, we will study this pressing issue in ways that not only lead to sound policy action and mitigation of suffering, but that also consider refugees contributions to the arts, literature, and the social sciences. Through collaboration across disciplines, the center will create ways to address the human and social needs of the refugee. Though centers focused on this immense global problem have been established in Europe Oxford University s Refugee Studies Centre being the primary example the UC Davis center would be the first of its kind in the U.S. The Center for the Study of the Undocumented Almost a quarter of the nation s undocumented immigrants reside in California, where they make up slightly more than 6% of the state s population. This center will focus on questions of human rights arising from the huge populations of undocumented immigrants living and working all over the world, 4

5 with a particular emphasis on the more than two million who make their home in California. People who are undocumented may be refugees or migrants but are still uniquely vulnerable to human rights violations. This center would focus its attention on making visible the lived-experiences of the undocumented at the grassroots level by promoting community-based research, from oral history projects to literary and artistic production. Establishing such a center is a timely and groundbreaking approach to human rights as a local issue one in keeping with the university s teaching mission and in furtherance of institutional diversity goals. This center will put UC Davis on the map as the only academic institution dedicated to the study of undocumented immigration in the world, while also equipping our students to address issues locally and globally. These four centers represent only a starting point for UC Davis ambitious and impactful research agenda. The institute will be nimble and responsive to emerging issues. Its framers imagine faculty and student research and innovation expanding into other critical human rights fields under the institute s umbrella, perhaps leading to the addition of temporary or permanent new research units, including those focusing on the rights of indigenous peoples, the right to cultural heritage, protecting the human rights of sexual minorities, defending people s right to share fully in scientific and medical developments, and the right to participate in the free exchange of ideas across electronic frontiers. MOVING FORWARD The Global Human Rights Institute will become the leading institution of its kind in the western United States within five years and among the nation s top 5 within eight. By positioning UC Davis as the western flagship for the larger universe of philanthropic and foundation giving in the human rights and international humanitarian fields, the institute s work will generate opportunities for the university to collaborate at an unprecedented level with preeminent foundations. The same would be true of access to US and European grant sources. Simultaneously, because the institute will be the only one of its kind on the West Coast, our university will be in a superb position to cultivate emerging and younger donors, in California and beyond, who are concerned with the future of human rights for themselves and their children, as well as more traditional donors engaged with the recognition and study of past and present crimes against humanity. Creating a state-of-the-art Global Human Rights Institute will require investment in human capital, longterm funding, and physical space. Endowment funding would support faculty leadership collaborating in the design, development, and coordination of the institute s programs. Endowment support is also needed for additional junior and senior faculty, postdoctoral positions, graduate fellowships, professional research staff; for professors of human rights practice, fellowships to host leading human rights professionals and rescued scholars; and for administrative costs, computing, and staff. The Human Rights Institute should be housed in a unique space at the intersection of the various colleges of the UC Davis campus rather than in one specific college. Such space should prioritize and encourage opportunities for accidental encounters between faculty and students from various disciplines. It should house the Human Rights Studies program in addition to the offices of the institute s faculty director, staff, as well as those for the four centers. The total cost is estimated to be $25-35 million. 5