Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience
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The November New Tactics on-line dialogue features “Human Rights in Higher Education: Incorporating practical experience”. This dialogue specifically features ideas, experiences and methods from human rights higher education programs for incorporating practical experience into human rights curriculums to better prepare human rights advocates for doing “on the ground” and “in the trenches” human rights work.

The featured resource practitioners (biographical information) include:

  • Abigail Booth, Programme Manager, Head of Nairobi Office, Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Kenya
  • Alice Nderitu, Fahamu (Kenya) in coordination with the University of Pretoria, South Africa
  • Jadwiga Maczynska, Project Manager, Jagiellonian University Human Rights Centre, Krakow, Poland
  • Mingzhen Ge, Shandong University, Human Rights Center, Law School, China
  • Diane Sisely, Director, Australian Centre for Human Rights Education at RMIT University
  • Barbara Frey, Director, Human Rights Program, University of Minnesota, USA
  • Robin Kirk, Director, Duke University Human Rights Center, North Carolina, USA
  • Nicole Palasz, Center for International Education, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Amy Weismann, Deputy Director, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights
  • Susan Atwood, Instructor, University of Minnesota’s Leadership : Leadership for Global Citizenship.
Be sure to take a look at our new collection of articles, guides, and classroom modules for your curriculum: New Tactics Resources for Educators!

Main themes of this dialogue:

  • Stories of Practice: examples of how practical experience is being incorporated in human rights education programs
  • Challenges: ethical issues with incorporating practical experience in human rights education programs
  • Curriculum Resources: creating and simulating practical experience

Please help us to keep this dialogue organized by 'replying' to these main themes, or 'replying' to other comments, instead of creating NEW comments. Thanks!

kantin's picture

Alumni and online forums -- create a group on newtactics.org!

Hi Mikael,

I wanted to share my experience of the University of Essex using former alumni to help share practical experience with human rights students. The Human Rights Centre brought alumni from Essex that are now working in the field, to hold a half-day seminar on their work. One of these seminars was on 'negotiating an international treaty at the UN' and it was very interesting. Alumni could be a GREAT resource for human rights educators to bring experience back into the learning process, and inspire current human rights students to believe that they really can find a job in human rights!

Regarding your interest in an online forum, you are ver welcome to create your own 'group' on our New Tactics website and invite your alumni to become members of this group. It would be a great way for you to keep in contact with them - and also a great resource for them to share their experiences with one another! In these groups, you can start your own 'online dialogues' (just like this one!), share documents, share images and video, and share links. It's very easy to start - just go to http://www.newtactics.org/en/og/create_group and click on 'Create a new group'. If you have any questions about this - let me know!  

This kind of online forum can also be useful for current human rights students. They could either participate in your alumni New Tactics group / online forum, or they could start their own. We have implemented this in Barb Frey's human rights advocacy class at the University of Minnesota and it has been very helpful for students to share resources, discussions, links, etc.  

Kristin Antin, New Tactics Online Community Builder