Event highlights growth of human rights programs in liberal arts education

The University of Chicago is leading a nationwide movement among colleges and universities to integrate human rights teaching and research into liberal arts curriculum.

This week, the University is hosting a Human Rights Teaching Roundtable, to review progress in the field. Faculty from a dozen liberal arts colleges and universities with established undergraduate programs in human rights will meet on Friday, Nov. 20 and Saturday, Nov. 21. Support for the meeting comes from the Teagle Foundation.

“The University of Chicago has historically been at the forefront of liberal arts education,” said Susan Gzesh, Executive Director of the University’s Human Rights Program, which started in 1997. “We know that the goal in liberal arts education is to help our students become better citizens.Our program participants believe that integrating the study of human rights into liberal arts education will help our graduates be better global citizens, as they will better understand the ‘rights’ language used by the rest of the world.”

“Human rights teaching began mostly in law schools,” said Gzesh, “where future lawyers are taught about human rights treaties and international enforcement bodies. However, human rights experts have come to realize that courtroom activity is just one part of the issue. Advancing human rights is as much a question of culture as of laws, and as such the field needs input from a wide range of scholars and disciplines.”

Michael Geyer, the Samuel N. Harper Professor of History and Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Human Rights Program, is chair of the roundtable.Participants are exploring the role of human rights in 21st–century liberal arts education, the interdisciplinary nature of human rights studies, and programmatic matters such as internships and curriculum. Participants include faculty of history, political science, literature, gender studies, East Asian languages and literature, and law.

The 11 other participating schools are Bard College, Columbia University, Duke University, Grinnell College, Macalester College, University of California, Berkeley, University of Connecticut, University of Dayton, University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, and University of Wisconsin.