Introduction to the special issue on human rights in higher education

In recent decades, the interdisciplinary field of human rights studies has blossomed. Research on all aspects of human rights has proliferated across a wide range of academic fields, including the traditional disciplines of law and political science but also literature, history, economics, social work, business, and others. The range and quality of much of this scholarship—evidenced as much in the pages of the Journal of Human Rights as anywhere—reveals an active, sustained, and productive academic community advancing our understanding of the manifold discourses, structures, and practices of human rights. Alongside this scholarship, universities and colleges have also incubated human rights education programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels. Each semester, a growing number of students encounter human rights in their postsecondary education. What, how, and why human rights are taught at universities and colleges has yet to be systematically examined.

This special issue takes up the question of human rights in higher education through a series of specific inquiries into how human rights education (HRE) is manifest in different kinds of academic and professional programs. The contributors represent a diverse range of perspectives, and each has been intimately engaged in the development, implementation, and analysis of educational programs. What these articles reveal is that HRE is happening in many colleges and universities, but much remains to be done if the promise of HRE is to be fully realized within higher education. Unleashing that potential will require building on some of the innovations documented here, as well as on sustained, critical inquiry into the curricula, pedagogies, and principles that have emerged as human rights has become a bona fide academic field.

We frame these contributions within the larger context of the global HRE movement (Suárez 2007). The call for HRE began with the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “every individual and organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms.” According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at least one hundred and eighty-eight international instruments (treaties, charters, and declarations) mention HRE directly or indirectly (OHCHR n.d.). The Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance, requires states party to “make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike” (OHCHR 1989). Human rights were conceived, and remain, an educational—as well as legal and political—project.

Concerted international efforts to advance HRE began in the 1990s. Following the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the United Nations declared the UN Decade for Human Rights Education (1995–2004; OHCHR 1996). The decade’s achievements included adoptions of new curricula and textbooks dealing with human rights, the development of professional training (particularly for those working in the justice system, such as police and judges), and increased regional and international cooperation with respect to HRE. In reviewing these accomplishments and shortcomings, the OHCHR recommended the establishment of an ongoing initiative, soon named the World Programme for Human Rights Education (WP; United Nations General Assembly 2004). Since 2005, the WP has cycled through three thematic phases: primary and secondary education was the focus of the first (2005–2009); the second concerned higher education, educators, civil servants, law enforcement, and military personnel (2010-2014); and the third centered on journalists and all who work in the media (2015–2019). Among the main achievements of the WP was the drafting and adoption of the 2011 UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training (UNDHRET). This fourteen-article statement begins with the recognition that everyone has the right to know about all human rights—a human right to HRE—and continues with an authoritative definition of HRE (see below) and a call on states to adopt legislation, policies, and provide resources for HRE (United Nations General Assembly 2011).

Amid these developments, the study of human rights has taken root in higher education. There are human rights courses and degrees in South Africa and Uganda; in Australia, India, and Pakistan; and in England, Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy. In South America, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico all offer degree programs. In North America, both Canada and the United States offer bachelor’s degrees in human rights. Furthermore, US colleges and universities are offering concentrations and certificates at the undergraduate level and master’s and doctorate degrees at the graduate level. This list does not include all the law degrees offered the world over.

And yet, although there are many books, manuals, and guides for teaching HRE in primary and secondary schools, far fewer manuals and “how to” books have been written for higher education. In the past eighteen months, premier issues have appeared for two peer-reviewed journals devoted to HRE: International Journal of Human Rights Education (housed by the University of San Francisco) and Human Rights Education Review (housed at the University of South-Eastern Norway). Neither journal is focused particularly on higher education. Within the broader civil society, there are several prominent HRE organizations, including Equitas International Centre for Human Rights Education in Montreal, Human Rights Education Association, and Human Rights Educators USA. Again, these organizations focus on primary and secondary education and the nonformal education sector. Most recently, scholars and educators at several universities—including the editors’—established the University and College Consortium for Human Rights Education, perhaps the beginning of more focused work at the tertiary level.

The UNDHRET definition of human rights education provides a helpful heuristic for beginning to think about human rights in higher education.

Article 2

1. Human rights education and training comprises all educational, training, information, awareness-raising and learning activities aimed at promoting universal respect for and observance of all human rights…providing persons with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behaviours…;

2. Human rights education and training encompasses:

(a) Education about human rights, which includes providing knowledge and understanding of human rights norms and principles, the values that underpin them and the mechanisms for their protection;

(b) Education through human rights, which includes learning and teaching in a way that respects the rights of both educators and learners;

(c) Education for human rights, which includes empowering persons to enjoy and exercise their rights and to respect and uphold the rights of others. (United Nations General Assembly 2011, emphasis added)

At the university level, we primarily teach about human rights, although what actually gets taught in the United States varies widely. Among the eight bachelor’s in human rights programs, there is no single required course, such as a foundational “Introduction to Human Rights,” common to all the degree programs. Undoubtedly, there is broad overlap in course offerings, but most programs allow a large percentage of a student’s curriculum to be filled with electives. Furthermore, the umbrella of “human rights” is capacious. Admittedly, as a field human rights covers a multitude of topics and can involve a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Courses on the human rights dimensions of immigration, gender, poverty, and education are all to be expected, as are courses offered by departments of history, political science, law, religious studies, literature, and anthropology. Such interdisciplinary and thematic breadth risks, as one author of this introduction (Cargas, forthcoming) argues, dilution. Many of these courses do not present their topics through an explicit human rights lens, reducing human rights to being vaguely synonymous with “social justice” or “peace” or “multiculturalism.” For human rights to cohere as a curriculum requires some sustained inquiry into the discourses, structures, and practices that can be said to constitute human rights. Even if that inquiry must always be held open to critique and amendment, such a collective effort might help map a shared landscape with common landmarks, such as the UDHR; routes, such as social movements; and inhabitants, such as refugees.

Among the contributors to this special issue, all grapple with the challenges of teaching about human rights in institutions of higher education. Sandra Sirota, in her article on human rights in teacher education, notes that although many US states have curricular standards on human rights for K–12 students, there is a clear lack of human rights content in American teacher preparation programs. Holly Atkinson presents a model of how medical schools can integrate HRE into the training of physicians. Jane McPherson and Kathryn Libal describe significant progress among social work educators in adopting a robust set of professional human rights standards for social workers. They note that the challenge now is in the practical application of HRE in the field education experience, where knowledge about human rights becomes practice for human rights.

Bill Simmons’s description of the University of Arizona’s human rights MA curriculum suggests just how effective problem-based learning (PBL) approaches can be for student learning about human rights. The PBL model of “learning without borders” is explicitly tied to learning objectives that seek to equip students with the tools of advocacy—that is, education for human rights. Both Atkinson and Sirota, McPherson, and Libel argue that future professionals in their fields should likewise be trained for advocacy. Teachers need to create a human rights-based environment in their classrooms. Social workers are expected to be advocates for the clients. Physicians are increasingly taking on the role of advocate as awareness builds “of the role that social structures, power hierarchies and structural violence play in determining … health outcomes.” Cargas maintains that widespread HRE must be recognized as fundamental for the ongoing health of the human rights movement. Here, education itself becomes a form of advocacy, as the achievements of the human rights movement can on be secured through the internalization of the principles and values of human rights.

And yet, if HRE is to avoid becoming indoctrination, practitioners must attend to pedagogical strategies that allow students to construct knowledge and values for themselves through an authentic encounter with the human rights framework. In this regard, both Sirota and Cargas highlight the importance of critical pedagogy as an antidote to “banking” approaches to knowledge, which tend to perpetuate inequitable power structures. Cargas responds to Kathryn Sikkink’s call for positive suggestions for, alongside the criticisms of, the human rights movement, by asking university faculty to do a better job of teaching critical thinking in addition to teaching about human rights. For Cargas, critical thinking is an essential human rights skill precisely because a more effective human rights movement must constantly analyze, reflect on, and adapt its structures and practices to the end of advancing justice and ameliorating abuses.

Sirota, too, sees critique as ultimately beneficial to the human rights project, particularly because it helps unmask the hidden face of power embedded in our institutions and habits. She adapts Felisa Tibbitts’s (2017) model of transformational HRE and argues for a critical pedagogy that “focuses on the empowerment of the oppressed.” Simmons’s PBL shares many of the underlying assumptions of critical pedagogy as it facilitates student engagement with human rights problems in a more immediate and personal way. This can also be seen in Atkinson’s case study approach, which confronts medical students with the dilemma of their “dual loyalty” to protect and enhance the health of their patients while being beholden to and embedded in institutions that may have competing interests. By working alongside communities or persons struggling for recognition of their human rights, students in both Simmons’s and Atkinson’s courses learn advocacy through an experience solidarity with the oppressed. Empowerment of the oppressed is perhaps better conceptualized as empowerment with the oppressed.

The focus on advocacy and empowerment is generally oriented toward students’ future capabilities as teachers, social workers, doctors, or other professionals. Less attention is given by the contributors to the empowerment of students as students, and what that might mean for understanding higher education through human rights. To be sure, critical pedagogy often reimagines the classroom as a political and ethical space, where relational learning becomes possible through mutual recognition and respect. Sirota writes of decolonizing HRE, which “focuses historical injustices and their connection to present-day human rights violations” but also implies the recognition that traditional approaches to HRE—which André Keet (2018) has called “declarationist”—perpetuate injustice inside and outside the classroom.

McPherson and Libal highlight the lack of human rights knowledge and understanding among field educators as a critical barrier to more effective HRE for social work students. It may also mean that students in the program experience a lack of human rights in their placements, which in certain circumstances can (re)produce trauma. Whatever the experiences of students in a particular course or even across a program, any assessment of the human rights conditions within higher education would need to account for the range of experiences all stakeholders have within the total institution of the modern university. Such an accounting is being attempted by the Donia Human Rights Center through University of Michigan’s Campus Human Rights Index (n.d.).

Although human rights have been an overt part of the postsecondary curriculum for decades, the contributions in this special issue make clear the need for sustained, critical inquiry as to the scope, nature, and impact of these programs. Of the three specific professions described here, it seems clear that more needs to be done. Social work field educators need more capacity to support students in applying their classroom knowledge of human rights to the “real world”; medical schools should be adopting the innovative practices of the Icahn School at Mount Sinai; and teacher preparation programs must address the near total absence of human rights in their curriculum. More generally, as human rights expand across undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, pride of place should go to problem-based learning and critical pedagogy as key approaches for student learning not only with respect to human rights knowledge but also for human rights skills and values. Such efforts can play a critical role in advancing the human rights movement and contribute to reversing the current global slide toward authoritarianism. Realizing such potential, however, will require colleges and universities to take their human rights obligations seriously, not only in research and teaching but across the range of their operations and relationships.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Shareen Hertel and Catherine Buerger for their support and advice in compiling this special issue. We are also grateful to the participants in the Human Rights in Higher Education Workshop sponsored by the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, including Holly Atkinson, Kristina Eberbach, Rachel Jackson, Kathryn Libal, Jane McPherson, Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, Marian Schlotterbeck, William Simmons, and Sandra Sirota.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarita Cargas

Sarita Cargas, D. Phil is an assistant professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. She earned her doctorate at Oxford University. Her teaching focus is on human rights and critical thinking. Cargas’ researches and publishes on the pedagogy of human rights. She has a forthcoming book, Human Rights Education: Forging an Academic Discipline, University of Pennsylvania Press autumn 2019.

Glenn Mitoma

Glenn Mitoma is an Assistant Professor of Human Rights and Education, jointly appointed with the Human Rights Institute and the Neag School of Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction. He is also Director of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. Glenn’s scholarship has focused on the history of human rights and human rights education. His first book, Human Rights and the Negotiation of American Power, was published in 2013 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. As Director of the Dodd Center, he oversees programs designed to promote a culture of human rights, including initiatives in K-12 human rights education and business and human rights.