The focus of the Duke University Center for International Studies’ second-annual summer institute is “Human Rights and Wrongs: Terror, Truth and Political Conflict in Classroom Study” and is for faculty who teach primarily undergraduate students. Applicants must be regular rank faculty, preferably at the junior level. All disciplines are welcome to apply. Community college faculty are especially encouraged to apply. The faculty director is Robin Kirk, who has extensive experience in the field of human rights. The institute will run July 12-16, 2010. Participants will receive a stipend of up to $1,000 to cover travel costs.
Participants in the 2009 Summer Institute on Human Rights in front of Brett Cook’s Mural of Pauli Murray.
The study of human rights incorporates fundamental questions about how human societies struggle over questions of what is moral and who is human. For undergraduates, a human-rights education is an important way to teach global citizens and to raise unsettling questions about human behavior. Students not only learn about the darker side of human nature, but also examine the successful movements that have turned society away from evils like slavery, torture and discrimination. This summer institute introduces faculty participants to the history, theory and practice of human rights and shows how they can be effectively taught.
The focus is on an interdisciplinary approach, using not only law and policy, but also philosophy, the arts, economics, and journalism.
Human rights are not beyond criticism; we will also look at human rights as an intellectual question and challenge orthodoxies. Participants will have a broad range of readings in the field and will also hear from recognized academics and practitioners. In addition, we will examine how hands-on learning can contribute to a richer education in human rights.
Finally, there will be opportunities for several field trips to sites where practitioners are working out how to translate human rights theory into great protection.
Robin Kirk has extensive experience in the field of human rights. An award-winning author and human-rights activist, Kirk teaches at Duke University and coordinates the Duke Human Rights Center, part of the Franklin Humanities Institute.
Robin Kirk, Director of the Duke Human Rights Center
She is the author of two books, More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She co-edited The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University), now in its second edition, and the Duke University Press The World Reader series. She blogs about human rights at Talking Rights.
Kirk won the 2005 Glamour magazine non-fiction contest with her essay on the death penalty, available in the November 2005 issue. She frequently speaks and writes about Latin America, human rights and U.S. policy. In fall 2006, she was a Fulbright lecturer at the Human Rights Center at Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. She was also a consultant to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which published its final report in May 2006. As a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch for twelve years, Kirk authored, co-authored and edited over twelve reports, all available on-line.
In the 1980s, Kirk reported from Peru for the U.S. media on the war between the government and the Shining Path. During that time, she also prepared reports for the U.S. Committee on Refugees, including the first report ever on the plight of Peru’s internally displaced people. The Decade of Chaqwa was followed by a second report, To Build Anew, dealing with the effort of some displaced families to return to their homes. Kirk also authored the first report chronicling the plight of the forcibly displaced in Colombia, Feeding the Tiger.
Kirk is a former Radcliffe Bunting Fellow and is a past winner of the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for Freelance Writing.
Application
In addition to the application above, you will also need to prepare a one-page statement as to why this institute would enrich your current courses or help to develop a new course.
The application and statement must be postmarked and mailed by June 1, 2011 (DEADLINE WAS EXTENDED)
to:
Nancy Hare Robbins
DUCIS
Box 90404
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708-0404
Email applications are acceptable, but no faxes, please. For questions, contact Nancy Hare Robbins [Email: nancy.robbins #AT# duke.edu ] (919) 684-6454.
More detailed information will be sent upon acceptance.
