News

Learn about all of the incredible events the Human Rights Lab put on this Fall!

UChicago's student newspaper covers the Pozen Center's full slate of Fall programming.

The Institute on Memory and Human Rights explores the role of memorials in reckoning with racial inequality and state violence, and how individual and collective memory shapes public narratives of past and present injustices. In September 2019, UChicago students, faculty, and members of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials traveled to Alabama to learn more about liberatory memory work and civil rights.

Albert Woodfox, who will deliver the Pozen Center's Fall 2019 Kirschner Lecture on November 7th, has been named a finalist for the National Book Award.

Hong Kong was the site for three weeks of an investigation into human rights locally and across Asia as part of the College’s new September courses.

"I am interested in both the objects and subjects of social change." —Allison Reed is a PhD student in Sociology. Her current research explores the social objective of expanding affordable housing.

We are now accepting applications for the Senior Lecturer and Director of Human Rights Curriculum, who will oversee and deepen our programs of undergraduate and doctoral education.

The Pozen Center for Human Rights invites applications for its 2019-20 Human Rights Preceptor position. The Preceptor works closely with Pozen Center staff to precept Human Rights minors as well as Interns in the Human Rights Internship Program. This position is open to doctoral students in any department or professional school of the University of Chicago.

The Pozen Center’s Human Rights Lab is in the news this week. Read about the new initiative and last week's lunch with Eric Blackmon.

The Pozen Center announces an exciting opportunity for students to study abroad at the new University of Chicago Hong Kong Center. Hong Kong: Human Rights in Asia is a three-week course offered before the beginning of Fall Quarter in September 2019.

On January 17, 2019, the Pozen Center’s Festival of Human Rights marked the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The Festival brought together the theory and practice of human rights for a campus and community audience.

The International Human Rights Law Clinic’s blog series The Matter of Human Rights continues with this third installment by third-year-law-student Anna Duke. In her piece “Never Again – Fulfilling a Promise,” Duke discusses the crime of genocide, established at the Genocide Convention in 1945, as an example of how the history of international law has manifested as a struggle between aspiration and political will. Duke references past instances of genocide and analyzes the language of the Convention to argue that public pressure can generate political will and overcome limitations of legal definitions.

Last Fall, the Pozen Center launched the Human Rights Lab, a new initiative under the leadership of Alice Kim, Director of Human Rights Practice. The Lab actively engages students and community in human rights work addressing racialized policing and mass incarceration.

On November 2, 2018, the Pozen Center convened a Health and Human Rights Workshop entitled, “Putting Human Rights to Work: Innovations in Human Rights Metrics and Practices.” Organized by faculty board member Dr. Renslow Sherer, the workshop was designed to offer a multidisciplinary review of human rights-based interventions in a variety of settings and with a range of vulnerable populations.

Yesterday marked the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With it, the International Human Rights Clinic brings the second installment of its blog series The Matter of Human Rights: “The Foundation of Human Rights: Is “Enough” Really Enough?” Joseph Nunn, a third year student at the law school, critically examines the promises of the Universal Declaration as they have been realized in practice.

“When an American president believes in torture, in banning Muslims, and in putting the children of immigrants in cages, it is a dark moment to observe the 70th anniversary of Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United States. Do Americans still remember the aspirations embedded in that revolutionary document? Can the values and transformative political projects that drove the human rights moment of the 1940s be recovered and repurposed 70 years on?”

December 10, 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—the landmark document that for the first time enumerated the fundamental human rights to be universally honored and protected. On January 17, 2019, the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights will honor and commemorate this milestone anniversary with a Festival of Human Rights. Students, faculty, and community members will select one of the UDHR’s thirty articles and interpret it through a contemporary lens. Over an eight-hour period, attendees will be invited to immerse themselves in the theory and practice of human rights through art making, literature, historical reflection, and more.

Our Human Rights interns are a thoughtful and talented group of students—for years now, the Pozen Center has drawn upon internship alumni to serve as Peer Leaders, coaching prospective interns through the application process and mentoring new cohorts as they secure and plan for their summer internships. This year, in partnership with Career Advancement, we were thrilled to expand alumni involvement in a meaningful way. More than 30 former interns—at various stages in their careers—signed up to review internship applications and interview students on campus. In this reflection, Peer Leader Salma Elkhaoudi shares her experience participating in the internship program from a new perspective.

Director of Human Rights Practice Alice Kim is coeditor of and contributor to a new book illustrating the devastation caused by an unjust prison system. Kim is the inaugural director of the new Human Rights Lab, a project of the Pozen Center, that is engaging students and community in human rights work addressing mass incarceration and racialized policing.

This post is the first installment from UChicago Law's International Human Rights Law Clinic in a series titled — The Matter of Human Rights.

The Pozen Center was thrilled to co-host a screening of The Area with the Film Studies Center this November, followed by a Q&A with the documentary’s directors Brian Ashby (AB’06) and David Schalliol (AM’04, PhD’15), and Deborah Payne, a producer and one of the film’s protagonists.

This fall, the Pozen Center convened a panel of attorneys to discuss the future of immigration law strategies and practices in the United States. In conversation with Susan Gzesh, Chirag Badlani, Lam Ho, Luis Mancheno, and Mony Ruiz-Velasco each represented different approaches that lawyers can take to ground their careers in human rights and pursue justice for immigrants.

"My research looks at... how Syrian artists who have relocated to Lebanon produce art that activates a variety of ethical standpoints vis-à-vis the conflict in Syria." —Jenna Antonucci is a PhD student in Anthropology. Her research also explored how Syrian artists have reconfigured their networks of support and care, despite their precarious legal status in Lebanon.