Human Rights Advocacy Minor at Wesleyan University

(Wesleyan students only)

The University Network is proud to support the Minor in Human Rights Advocacy in partnership with Wesleyan University. The Minor offers Wesleyan students the opportunity to merge their interdisciplinary studies with hands-on experience in human rights practice over the course of their academic study at Wesleyan. 

The new Advocacy Minor builds on two former programs: our Human Rights Summer Intensive and our Pilot Program in Human Rights Advocacy. For more information about the origins of our minor, click the links above.

Applications for the Minor at Wesleyan are accepted during the spring semester. Students selected for the Advocacy Minor complete seven required courses in human rights: 

  • Human Rights Standards

  • Human Rights Advocacy

  • Advanced Human Rights Advocacy

  • Research and Writing for Advocacy

  • Three (3) additional courses related to human rights offered by Wesleyan faculty and/or University Network Staff

These courses are designed to provide students with an understanding of foundational human rights texts and critiques, and sharpen their research, writing, and advocacy skills. The flexibility of the Minor’s curriculum allow students the ability to personalize their schedules and distribute their Advocacy Minor courses across multiple academic semesters.

As part of the Minor, students receive training from human rights experts, practice their fact-finding and documentation skills in our Intensive Simulation Exercise, and apply their skills to real-world human rights projects under the guidance of our experienced supervisors. Throughout the Minor, our supervisors and staff provide personalized feedback to students, developing students’ skills to advance human rights and social justice, locally and globally. Through their projects, students directly support the work of communities facing rights abuse and injustice. 

During breaks in the academic year, students in the Minor may travel to the site of rights abuse to work directly with affected communities in small groups (2 or 3 students) with a supervisor.

We encourage all Wesleyan students who share a passion for social justice and human rights to apply, regardless of their intended career trajectory. The goal of the Minor is to allow students to critically engage in human rights and, in the future, engage with human rights from their chosen profession in ethical, informed, and creative ways.

FAQs

What is the University Network for Human Rights?

The University Network for Human Rights seeks to train the next generation of advocates by engaging undergraduate and graduate students in supervised human rights fact-finding, documentation, and advocacy. We defend human rights in their broadest sense and pursue movement-based advocacy that centers the voices of directly-affected communities. We are currently based on the campus of Wesleyan University, where we have pioneered a clinical model in undergraduate human rights education. To date, we have engaged in our projects undergraduates from Amherst, Brown, Harvard, Howard, Pomona, Stanford, UConn, UC Santa Barbara, the University of Pennsylvania, Wesleyan, Yale and more. Our human rights work has received international coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, New Republic, The Guardian, CBS News, and more.

Why translate the law school clinical model to the undergraduate realm?

The Program translates the law school clinical model into the undergraduate space. There are several important reasons to challenge the idea that clinical experiences should be limited to law students alone. Contrary to mainstream perception, the vast majority of human rights work does not require a formal legal education. Thus, although the clinical-legal model has served as a welcome incubator for experiential learning, the capacities most needed in today’s advocacy environment are not legal skills. Instead, they include: development of respectful and effective partnerships with local stakeholders, historical and cultural awareness, fact-finding (interviewing, documentation, site visits, etc.), effective communication and ability to identify relevant target audience, advocacy campaign design, negotiation and conflict resolution, race-, class-, and gender-based analysis, data analysis, further technical skills, and more. The clinical model also offers significant advantages over intern/externships for undergraduates. While these placements can benefit students’ professional development, the clinical model allows for closer integration between theory and practice, a deeper and more rewarding experience for students, and the guarantee that each participant will engage in substantive work. As we design our projects with student participation in mind, we are better able to ensure that all participants can develop a thicker sense of how human rights projects are designed and realized. 

What paths might Minor participants pursue after graduation?

For undergraduates with an interest in human rights, this program will enhance their post-graduate opportunities and enable them to make more informed decisions about how and why their graduate and professional paths intersect with human rights. Students who complete the Program will be able to compete more successfully for positions in the human rights field against candidates from law schools, given the practical skills and professional poise that this experiential education will provide. In addition, the Program will prepare students for graduate study in law, public health, social sciences, the STEM fields, medicine, or public policy. Students will bring a human rights lens to other fields that contribute to human rights critically and productively. The Program will enable students to engage with human rights from their chosen profession in ethical, informed, and creative ways.

Does the Minor have any particular geographic focus?

No. The University Network undertakes human rights projects in the United States and in other countries. To date, our team has pursued projects domestically in Connecticut, Louisiana, and New York, and internationally in Bolivia, India, Mexico, the Northern Triangle, Western Sahara, Yemen and elsewhere. Our team of supervisors have worked on human rights projects in these and two dozen other countries around the world. We expect to place students on projects that involve their areas of interest, though the skills developed through the Program are similar across project assignments.