HUMAN RIGHTS AT UCONN Examining the most pressing human rights questions and preparing the next generation of human rights leaders.
Human Rights for the Next Generation
On October 1, 1946, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg delivered its verdict, convicting 19 Nazi leaders of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Seventy-five years later, as the world faces new challenges to democracy and rule of law, we dedicate The Dodd Center for Human Rights, extending the legacy of Nuremberg for the next generation.
Learn more about the event we hosted on October 15, 2021 featuring Senator Chris Dodd and President Joe Biden.
Evolving Landscapes of Human Rights
Celebrating 20 Years of Interdisciplinarity & Innovation March 29-31, 2023 • Storrs, CT
Human Rights and the Global Assault on Democracy October 25-27, 2023
The Human Rights Summit at The Dodd Center for Human Rights brings together scholars, activists, policymakers, artists, and business leaders from across the world to examine the key human rights challenges of our time and generate new ideas to promote global justice and human dignity.
Through a mix of high-profile lectures, practical workshops, and roundtable discussions, the Human Rights Summit will serve as a critical venue for sharing insights, building relationships, and inspiring action.
A partnership between the Hartford Public Library, University of Connecticut, and the Connecticut/Baden-Württemberg Human Rights Research Consortium culminated in a two-day event, AI Odyssey, aiming to bridge the digital divide in AI and support teens learning to harness innovative technologies.
Human rights education and rights-based approaches to learning can help cultivate transformative agency for both teachers and students and contribute to securing human rights for all.
Human Rights graduate student Sage Phillips ’22 (CLAS), ’24 MA, speaks with U.S. Treasurer Lynn Malerba ’08 MPA, Chief of the Mohegan Tribe, on the significance of her role as both a tribal leader and senior U.S. official, as well as the values of representation and inspiration.
The Residue of Memory is an interactive two-part workshop exploring the ways past events leave their mark in art.
Learn more about art objects that forge a tangible link to the past through close looking and discussion of work by Yishai Jusidman and Binh Danh. Then make your own cyanotype print using autumn leaves.
21st-century America is increasingly polarized over policing. From yard signs to public protests, from political rhetoric to legislative acts, tension over the role and status of police grips us daily. Why are we so divided over this issue? Are there new approaches that might find broader support? Join us for a dialogue on this most critically important subject in which we will explore the development of policing in our democracy and discuss the present-day landscape of law enforcement, community relations, individual rights, and possible ways forward from our current landscape. Facilitated, small-group conversations will be followed by a Q&A with guest scholars and activists. You are warmly and respectfully encouraged to come speak from your heart about this subject that lies at the shared heart of the “Land of the Free.”
The US National Contact Point is a unique human rights complaints mechanism. David Sullivan serves in this role and will outline what the mechanism does, how it is being improved in line with international developments and US policy commitments, and where it fits within the landscape of remedy for corporate human right violations.
About Our Guest
David Sullivan was named the U.S. National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (on Responsible Business Conduct), and Senior Adviser on Corporate Social Responsibility in November 2021. In this capacity he promotes business conduct that is not only commercially viable, but also conducted in a manner consistent with high standards related to labor, the environment, human rights, and other sustainability factors. The role of the NCP is to promote awareness of the OECD Guidelines, to facilitate their practical application, and to seek to resolve, through mediation or conciliation, disputes or “specific instances” regarding an enterprise’s conduct.
Previously, David was a senior State Department attorney. He joined the Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser in 1998, and since then served as an Attorney-Adviser in offices for international claims, law enforcement, the Western Hemisphere, employment and ethics, human rights, and economic and business affairs. He also served as the senior legal adviser to the U.S. Mission to the UN in Geneva.
David’s prior legal work has been with the Department of the Treasury, White & Case, and the Alaska Supreme Court. He has also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Eswatini and worked for IBM. David has a law degree from Yale Law School, a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale College. He is from Cleveland, Ohio.
This workshop is sponsored by the Business & Human Rights Initiative, part of the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute’s Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs.
UConn’s El Instituto (Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies) awarded small seed grants to support faculty-led workshops, reading groups or other research, on any theme of relevance to Latine, Latin American or Caribbean studies in the academic year 2023. Please join us this fall semester in this 4 part series of events to hear about their research accomplishments. Light Refreshments Served. There is limited space, RSVP today!
2nd Event:
“Humility in Practices of Transitional Justice: the case of Campo Algodonero, Mexico,” by Dr. Robin Adèle Greeley
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Mexican state to carry out a comprehensive program of reparations in the landmark case of Campo Algodonero. The Court found the Mexican state had failed to prevent the murders in 2001 of three young women in Ciudad Juárez. Part of a wave of femicides that continue to afflict women in Mexico, the Campo Algodonero murders sparked a pivotal turn in the Court’s rulings in cases of gender violence. As part of the reparations, the Court ordered the Mexican state to apologize and to build a memorial. Yet since its inauguration in 2011, the Campo Algodonero memorial has been a site not of public commemoration, but of vociferous contestation by the principal audience for which it was intended: the families of the murdered women. This talk explores why the seemingly humble State apology, delivered at the memorial site, was vehemently rejected by the victims’ families, and what this can tell us about the role of humility in practices of transitional justice.
The Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute invites all undergraduate students interested in human rights to attend an information session about our 4+1 Accelerated Master of Arts Program! HRI’s Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. David Richards, and Educational Program Administrator, Dr. Alyssa Webb, will be present and ready to answer questions about the MA program, and how it may complement prospective students’ professional aspirations.
Structured dialogues increase student engagement and foster inclusive learning environments. By incorporating dialogic modalities into the classroom, students can learn to communicate across difference and navigate challenging conversations, while engaging deeply with course content. In this collaborative workshop, participants will:
Gain firsthand experience by participating in a structured dialogue
Learn to build the foundation for a successful dialogue in diverse classroom contexts
Around the world children born to migrant parents with precarious status face difficulties obtaining birth certificates, and may become stateless as a result. This has important implications for migrant families’ economic and social rights. Conversely, points of access to social and economic rights are often the very sites where migrant families’ exclusion from birth registration becomes apparent. Nevertheless, global campaigns to achieve “legal identity for all” in pursuit of the SDG target 16.9 promote the linkage of birth registration with social welfare entitlements or health service delivery. How might such ‘good practices’ have negative outcomes for migrant families? And what would inclusive and non-discriminatory birth registration look like?
Dr. Allison Petrozziello will join us virtually from Toronto Metropolitan University to discuss selected findings from her dissertation (and forthcoming book) Birth Registration as Bordering Practice, which garnered the International Studies Association-Human Rights section’s 2024 Best Dissertation Award.
While our guest speaker will join us virtually, we welcome you to join us on UConn’s campus in Dodd 162, or online via Zoom.
Assistant Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University
Allison Petrozziello is Assistant Professor of Global Migration & Inequality at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Petrozziello is a global governance scholar specialized in gender and human-rights based approaches to the governance of migration and citizenship. Her academic work builds on over 15 years of experience in international research, teaching, and policy advocacy work, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, with stakeholders ranging from grassroots organizations to policymakers to the United Nations. She has consulted for UN Women, the International Labour Organization (ILO), Inter-American Development Bank, and the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), among others. At TMU, she teaches courses in comparative and global politics for undergraduate programs in the Department of Politics and Public Administration as well as the PhD program in Policy Studies.
The Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute invites all undergraduate students interested in human rights to attend an information session about our 4+1 Accelerated Master of Arts Program! HRI’s Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. David Richards, and Educational Program Administrator, Dr. Alyssa Webb, will be present and ready to answer questions about the MA program, and how it may complement prospective students’ professional aspirations.
A central strand of author and activist Ruchira Gupta’s novel and her Emmy-winning documentary, this panel will draw on her experience as the founder of Apne Aap (EN: ‘self-action’), which works to end sex trafficking by breaking the cycle of inter-generational prostitution through education, nutrition, livelihood linkages and legal protection.
Moderated by Bandana Purkayastha (Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian and Asian American Studies), the panel will engage experts with local and global perspectives in a conversation of grave importance for human dignity and justice.
This panel extends from the aim of the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature to shed light on pressing human rights issues in an accessible way for children and youth.
About the Malka Penn Award
The Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature is given annually to the authors of an outstanding children’s book addressing human rights issues or themes such as discrimination, equity, poverty, justice, war, peace, slavery or freedom.
Named in honor of author Michele Palmer, who writes under the pseudonym Malka Penn, the award recognizes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, or biography which are written for children from preschool to high school. Within these larger themes, the award committee is particularly eager to recognize stories about individuals – real or fictional, children or adults – who have been affected by social injustices, and who, by confronting them, have made a difference in their lives or the lives of others.
The 2024 Malka Penn Award will be presented to the authors of the winning books by the Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs as part of this event.
How to Join Us
This event will take place in-person with an optional livestream for those unable to join live. We encourage all those able to join us live in The Dodd Center for Human Rights to come in-person. Please RSVP below.
Ruchira Gupta is an Emmy winning journalist and founder of the anti sex trafficking NGO, Aapne Ap, that helps women and girls exit systems of prostitution. I Kick and I Fly is her debut fiction novel. She has been given the French Ordre National du Mérite, Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction among other honors for her contribution to the establishment of the UN Trafficking Fund for Survivors, the passage of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act and her grassroots activism with Apne Aap. She has co-written a book with Gloria Steinem, As if Women Matter, and edited two anthologies, River of Flesh and Renu’s Letters to Birju Babu.
Ruchira holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Smith College. Ruchira has worked for the United Nations in Nepal, Thailand, Kosovo, Iran, and USA. She teaches occasionally as a visiting professor at New York University. She divides her time between New York and Forbesganj, her childhood home in the foothills of the Himalayas, where she paints her mother’s garden.
Aida Salazar is an award-winning author, arts activist, and translator whose writings for adults and children explore issues of identity and social justice. She is the author of the critically acclaimed middle grade verse novels, The Moon Within (International Latino Book Award Winner); Land of the Cranes (Américas Award, California Library Association Beatty Award, Northern CA Book Award, NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, Jane Addams Peace Honor, International Latino Book Award Honor); as well as A Seed in the Sun (Tomás Rivera Children’s Book Award, ALA RISE Feminist Book Project Top 10 Book, NCTE Notable Poetry/ Verse Novel Honor, Jane Addams Peace Award Finalist). Her other works include the bio picture book Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter (Caldecott Honor, Malka Penn Award, International Latino Book Awards- Rising Star and Gold Medal); the picture book anthology, In the Spirit of a Dream: 13 Stories of Immigrants of Color (Eureka Silver Medal); and the anthology Calling the Moon: Period Stories by BIPOC Authors. Her story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet production by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. She lives with her family of artists in Oakland, CA.
The Culture of Collage is an interactive two-part workshop exploring collage as a tool for subversion.
Learn more about the ways artists use collage as a tool for subversion through close looking and discussion of work by Melvin Edwards, Paul Scott, and Sukanya Rahman. Then make your own collage.
Is there a topic that you believe demands discussion but that you fear will prove too polarizing for civil conversation? Do you avoid organizing such a discussion because you are unsure of how to ensure meaningful engagement across difference? Are you interested in honing your skills of engaging in conversation with people who think differently from you? If so, please join us for this workshop which will focus on the following subjects:
basic theories of, and approaches to, conflict resolution-based dialogue;
facilitating difficult conversations in a structured-dialogue setting;
creating and hosting dialogues (focusing on the Encounters dialogue model)
The Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute invites all undergraduate students interested in human rights to attend an information session about our 4+1 Accelerated Master of Arts Program! HRI’s Director of Graduate Studies, Dr. David Richards, and Educational Program Administrator, Dr. Alyssa Webb, will be present and ready to answer questions about the MA program, and how it may complement prospective students’ professional aspirations.