Duke Human Rights Advocates,

Happy 2024! With a new year comes new opportunities to deepen your understanding of human rights issues, both nationally and globally. Our first event of the Spring semester, the Rights and the Humanities Annual Lecture, focused on the fight for human rights here in the U.S.. Our first Rights! Camera! Action! film of the semester also focuses on a national issue - that of disability justice in the United States. We’ll be screening the film “I Didn’t See You There” in partnership with the Duke Disability Alliance to honor Disability Pride Month on campus.

We’ll also explore human rights issues on a global scale with our programming this semester. Our second Rights! Camera! Action! Film, “The Legends of the Underground,” covers the persecution of LGBTQ people in Nigeria; we are honored to be bringing one of the featured activists in the film, Micheal Ighodaro, to the film screening for a fireside chat with our new FAB member, Dr. Chris Beyrer. And of course, our Juan E. Méndez Book Award Ceremony will highlight human rights in Latin America. This year’s winner, Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty, seeks to understand genocide in Guatemala and Argentina through forensic evidence and exhumations. We are also co-sponsoring The Palestine Seminar, which includes a series of timely events such as Concrete Imaginings: Building a Liberated Palestine.

Last but not least, our Student Advisory Board’s annual event, Global Ideas, Local Impact, will once again highlight the amazing work of our Duke alumni as we welcome three Blue Devils back to campus to discuss their careers in human rights fields.

Winter in Review

Méndez Book Award

Winner Announced

Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023) by Alexa Hagerty is the winner of the 2024 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. The four judges were unanimous in their choice of the winner.

Hagerty will accept the award and discuss her work during the Spring semester of 2024 on the Duke University campus.

This is the fifteenth year of this prestigious award. The award is supported by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Human Rights Archive at the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

In Still Life with Bones, anthropologist Alexa Hagerty describes her work with forensic teams and victims’ families to investigate crimes against humanity in Latin America. This beautifully written and richly researched story explores what science can tell us about the lives of the dead and the grief of the living for the loved ones they’ve lost. Hagerty is meticulous and unsparing in her exploration of the intricacies of finding, cataloging, and returning remains in Guatemala and Argentina, very different cultures united in loss and the yearning to recover the lives violently taken and uphold the rights of the dead and the obligations of mourning and the quest for justice.

Rights and Humanities Annual Lecture

The Rise of Religious Liberty:

Made Possible by the Decline of Public Morality

As part of the Rights & Humanities Annual Lecture series, the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the Duke Human Rights Center@FHI welcomed Katherine Franke, a professor of law at Columbia University and the director of the Columbia Center for Gender & Sexuality Law. Dr. Franke delved into the increasingly prevalent theme of wins in politics that have rewritten constitutional rights. She argued that recent cases related to gun rights, abortion rights, and COVID measures are examples of a larger agenda to transform and privatize the idea of “public good.”

Upcoming Events

Rights!, Camera!, Action!

Created in 2009, the Rights! Camera! Action! film series features documentaries that focus on human rights related themes across the globe. Each year, there are four film screenings, followed by panel discussions with Duke faculty or students, community activists, and occasionally the filmmakers themselves.

This semester, Duke PhD candidates Bryan Rusch and Tatum Tricarico will speak about their experiences as students with disabilities at Duke and discuss the disability justice movement on campus after the screening of "I Didn't See You There." We also look forward to hosting LGBTQ activist Micheal Ighodaro, who is featured in the documentary "The Legend of the Underground."

Event Details

Student Opportunities

Koonz Human

Rights Prize

Have you written an interesting, thought-provoking, or otherwise exemplary essay/paper for one of your courses? Or perhaps created a documentary video, phone app, short story, or some other alternative project about a human rights theme? If so, consider submitting your work for the Koonz Human Rights Prize.

Summer Research Grant

Currently enrolled Duke undergraduate and graduate students are invited to apply for summer research funding from the Duke Human Rights Center@FHI. The grant aims to strengthen global research opportunities for students interested in developing, implementing, and working in human rights.

Grants are available up to $2000!

Apply Today

Global Ideas,

Local Impact

The Student Advisory Board at the Duke Human Rights Center@FHI hosts an annual event each spring called Global Ideas, Local Impact. The event includes a Research Slam, where students present their human rights research conducted throughout the school year, and an alumni panel, where alumni working in different fields related to human rights share their experiences and advice about human rights work.

Learn More

Discover More

humanrights.fhi.duke.edu

The