Throughout the 20th anniversary academic year, the Pozen Center invited eleven human rights practitioners for three-day residencies. These visits provided the opportunity for the Pozen Center and broader University communities to learn from practicing lawyers, accomplished academics, and top staff of major human rights organizations from around the world. Anticipating the launch of new, practice-oriented Human Rights Lab -- the first of its kind -- these visits from practitioners allowed the Pozen Center faculty and staff to formulate a vision for how an experimental Human Rights Lab might take shape.

The residents included Jason De León, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and 2017 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grantee, and Carlos Javier Ortiz, filmmaker and photographer documenting contemporary urban life, a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow. Other residents represented human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and human rights studies centers at NYU and Carnegie Mellon. Across the eleven visits, residents often emphasized the role of technology and new media platforms in contemporary human rights practice.

In addition to meeting with members of the Faculty Board and center staff, residents participated in “Careers in Human Rights” lunches with UChicago students as a centerpiece of their stay. While on campus, they also visited classes, appeared at events including public talks and promotions for their books, and joined in UChicago labs and workshops, connecting with people and projects relevant to their work. These kind of connections between different academic disciplines, and with avenues of practice beyond the academy, are the kind of work the Center will pursue at an even more intensive level through the Human Rights Lab.

 

Thank you to all of our 2017-18 Residents:

  • Karyn Kaplan (Executive Director, Asia Catalyst)
  • Steven L.B. Jensen (Project Director and Researcher, Danish Institute for Human Rights)
  • Chase Strangio (Staff Attorney, ACLU, LGBT & HIV Projects)
  • Jason De León (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan; Director, Undocumented Migration Project)
  • Jay Aronsen (Associate Professor of History and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Center for Human Rights Science)
  • Iain Levine (Deputy Executive Director, Human Rights Watch)
  • Saket Soni (Executive Director, National Guestworker Alliance and the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice)
  • Sally Merry (Silver Professor of Anthropology, New York University; Faculty Director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU Law School)
  • Sam Gregory (Program Director, WITNESS)
  • Sumner B. Twiss (Distinguished Professor of Human Rights, Ethics and Religion, Florida State University)
  • Carlos Javier Ortiz (Director, Cinematographer & Documentary Photographer)