The Human Rights Project helps the Bard community examine the theory and
practice of human rights through teaching, research, and public programs.

academics

Following the establishment in 2002 of the Human Rights Program, the first
full academic concentration in human rights at a U.S. college, Bard created the Henry R. Luce Professorship in Human Rights and Journalism, and has gone on to develop a range of new  courses across the undergraduate curriculum. The core courses cover subjects such as freedom of expression, colonialism and human rights in Africa, the history of the human rights movement, and ways of understanding and challenging violence and suffering.

New courses link academic concerns with concrete projects.  One course focuses on the presence of Hispanic migrant workers in the Hudson Valley, which resulted in a field center for rights education and ESL instruction for children of migrant farm workers.

The Human Rights Video Clinic, taught by Gillian Caldwell of the New York-based NGO Witness, enabled a dozen students to produce two short films using documentary footage shot by Witness partner organizations in Burma and the United States.

With a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the College created a Professorship in Human Rights and Journalism in 2003, filled by writers Ian Buruma and Mark Danner, to investigate the impact of new information and communications technologies on democracy and human rights.

hands-on experience

In the summers of 2003 and 2004 the Human Rights Project supported two
dozen student internships at organizations including Human Rights Watch,
WITNESS, New Hampshire Legal Assistance, Cultural Survival, the Moscow
bureau of the New York Times, the Cambodia Daily, Rape Crisis Cape Town,
and the Public Interest Law Initiative in Budapest.

HRP also sponsors individual students pursuing research abroad and at home. Students have visited Turkey, Mexico, The Hague, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, and Washington DC.

ongoing projects

HRP serves as the anchor for two student-led projects: the Bard Prison Initiative, created by students and directed by a recent Bard graduate, which works to restore higher education in New York State prisons; and the Migrant Labor Project, which seeks to improve the conditions of migrant laborers and their families in New York State, particularly the Hudson Valley, through community and campus education, service, research, and advocacy work.

In addition, the Project has worked with the International Center for Transitional Justice in creating a complete Internet video archive and a digital videotape
archive of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

events on campus
The Project provides an extensive public lecture and film series for the campus community, including presentations by leading human rights advocates, filmmakers, and scholars from around the world.
              

The Human Rights Project has received generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Glaser Progress Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Henry R. Luce Foundation, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.

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