May | 2020
News and Opportunities
Congratulations to the Class of 2020!
To the 2020 Human Rights Certificate graduates,

We celebrate your completion of four years of study at Duke University! This has been a challenging end-of-the-year and we want to honor everything you have accomplished and overcome. We are grateful to be a part of your community during your time at Duke and look forward to staying in touch as you discern the next chapter in your life. The world needs people who care about human rights now more than ever.

Congratulations on this extraordinary accomplishment and please stay in touch!

Sincerely,
DHRC@FHI faculty and staff
Meet the 2020 Human Rights Certificate Graduates!
This year we are celebrating 19 Human Rights Certificate graduates! Congratulations to Semhal Araya, Donovan Bendana, MacKenzi Simpson, Isabel Shepard, Cara Kim, Alicia Porile, Imani Hicks, Madeline Cochrane, Sonali Mehta, Stephanie Mayle, Libby Wheeler, Tea Hughes, Camille Ampey, Spencer Bandeen, Daisy Almonte, Kevin Soloman, Gino Nuzzolillo, Tyler Kopp, and Sujeiry Jimenez! We invite you to learn more about these amazing students on the website .
Human Rights Research Grant Recipients
Each year, the DHRC@FHI awards students interested in developing, implementing and working in human rights with funding for summer research. These grants typically support domestic and international research, but due to COVID-19, students will only be conducting remote research this summer. This year’s recipients include four undergraduate and two graduate students with projects ranging from the League of Nations’ gendered legal and humanitarian response to the Armenian Genocide to ways Durham’s Queer community supports transgender and queer youth of color. Students will also explore best practices for working with refugee children, the role of school curriculum on racial identity, the impact of “black lung” on women in China, and the intersection of human rights, COVID-19 and the impact on Tanzanian small-scale fishers. To learn more about each recipient and to follow their research this summer, please visit the Human Rights Research Grant page .
Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize Winners
The recipients of the 2020 Oliver W. Koonz Prize, which recognizes the innovative work being done on human rights by students, are Selin Ocal and James Robinson. Below are the responses of the 2020 Koonz Prize judges, Professors Claudia Koonz, Robin Kirk and James Chappel.


2020 Best Essay Award - Selin Ocal, “Addressing Hepatitis C in the American Incarcerated Population: Strategies for Nationwide Elimination.” Building on research funded by a Human Rights Summer Research Grant, Ocal shows how a public health intervention in the prison system might help to control the nationwide epidemic of Hepatitis C. The paper is a sterling example of the necessity of a human rights framework for medical thinking and public health—a necessity that is all too apparent now, in the era of COVID-19. You can read Selin Ocal’s paper here .

2020 Best Alternative Project - James Robinson, “Land Loss in Louisiana." James Robinson has produced a remarkable, multimedia exploration of land loss in Louisiana. Sea level rise is leading to a shrinking of the Louisiana coast, and also the devastation of local ecologies by seawater. Through an evocative use of images, audio, and video—capped off with a beautiful ten-minute documentary—the project brings viewers into the hearts and homes of those affected. The film can be viewed here .
Adam Domby, "White Supremacist or Philanthropist? Julian Carr and Durham's Commemorative Landscape"
Adam Domby, author and assistant professor of history at the College of Charleston, argues that the Lost Cause ideology that emerged after the Civil War and flourished in the early 20th century in essence sought to recast a struggle to perpetuate slavery as a heroic defense of the South. This was not only an insidious goal, but was founded on falsehoods, including those peddled by one of Duke's primary early benefactors, Julian Carr. As a graduate student, Domby resurfaced from the archives with the speech Julian Carr delivered at the inauguration of UNC-Chapel Hill's "Silent Sam" statue, helping spur protests and the statue's ultimate removal. Prof. Domby is the author of, " The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory ," (University of Virginia Press, 2020) and gave this talk on February 27, 2020.
Science Fiction and Human Rights
Robin Kirk (Co-Director of the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI) published an essay on the speculative fiction website Fantasy Cafe, where she wrote about using the Rubenstein Library's Locus Science Fiction Collection to teach one of her classes at Duke this semester.

Robin Kirk is an award-winning poet and essayist, and her short fiction appears in Beyond the Nightlight, Tomorrow: Apocalyptic Short Stories , Wicked South: Secrets and Lies: Stories for Young Adults , and more. The Bond , her science fiction debut novel, received the 2018 Foreword INDIES Bronze Award for Young Adult Fiction and was a finalist in the 2019 Manly Wade Wellman Award for North Carolina Science Fiction and Fantasy. The second book in the Bond Trilogy , The Hive Queen , is coming out on August 3, 2020! You can read her essay titled," Science Fiction and Human Rights " here .
Teaching for Equity Fellows
This year 18 faculty from the Duke School of Medicine and School of Nursing completed the Teaching for Equity Fellowship. The final sessions of the program took place over Zoom and focused on facilitation techniques for the virtual classroom and supporting students in the transition to online learning. Many of the faculty are on the frontlines of caring for patients during this pandemic, and we are incredibly grateful for the care and dedication they bring to their work.

In addition to the Fellowship, the leadership team offered four continuing education workshops for alumni of the program. Some of the topics included what an equitable Duke looks like, how to engage emotion in the classroom, and racial equity in the time of pandemic. Faculty shared various resources across campus for responding to coronavirus and resources for standing up to anti-Asian racism and violence. One of the co-faciliators of the program, Dr. Tema Okun, is also collecting articles focused on racism, racial justice and COVID-19 on the Dismantling Racism website .
Carolyn Forché: "What You Have Heard Is True"
2019 Méndez Human Rights Book Award
Duke University named Carolyn Forché’s timely book, “What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance” (Penguin Press, 2019) as the winner of the 2019 Juan E. Méndez Book Award for Human Rights in Latin America. Forché visited the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute to receive the award and read from her book in March.

“What You Have Heard is True” is an account of a poet’s engagement with a country going through violent change, in part funded and propelled by U.S. foreign policy. Forché first visited El Salvador in the 1970s, brought there by an enigmatic stranger who then helped her witness the struggle of peasants and the poor for peace. Forché chronicles how she transforms from a young writer with an unfocused “urge to do something in the face of some wrongdoing or injustice inflicted against another” into the lifelong activist and a “poet of witness” as she has called herself since. Her call to awareness and political action is as timely now as it was when she travelled to El Salvador in the 1970s.
Interested in a Career in Human Rights? Join the Duke Alumni Human Rights LinkedIn Community!
If you are interested in pursuing a career in human rights and need to connect with Duke alumni and other peers in the same community, DHRC@FHI has created a LinkedIn group to help navigate this process. You can use this network to interact and share updates and resources with other Duke alumni who are working, or want to work, in human rights. You can also use this group to share interesting news and career/internship opportunities in human rights work. Please join us.
Update from the Pauli Murray Center
The Pauli Murray Center staff is still working from home towards their aim of opening the National Historic Landmark site and education center. They are working with their architects to develop plans for the interior renovation of their historic house and the accessibility of the entire site; with their programming team to craft a 3-5 year plan; with their fundraising committee and consultants to outline future campaigns; and with their personnel task force to complete their new HR policies. To check for more updates, and events, check the website here .

The Center has also published numerous ways to extend support to various groups in these times of the pandemic. These are some support foundations and funds you could contribute to:

DHRC@FHI’s Student Advisory Board Transitions
By Lizzy Kramer, '22

Being the Student Advisory Board (SAB) co-chair this year with Stephanie Mayle has enabled me to connect with faculty who have inspired me and pushed me to challenge my beliefs and find avenues for my passion for lifting up the conversation about Human Rights on Duke’s campus. It has been a privilege to collaborate with the faculty at the DHRC, and to work alongside other students on the SAB who have such a vivid passion and devotion to furthering dialogue about human rights. I believe in the ability of this community to stay connected across whatever challenges the future may hold and am so excited to see how our new cohort, led by Lily Levin and Sarah Kane, continue the SAB’s mission. They are both amazing people and organizers, and I know it will be an incredible year, wherever we all may be.  
Check out the 2020 Fall Human Rights Courses
Each semester, Duke offers undergraduates dozens of courses related to global human rights issues. The courses come from a variety of disciplines, including history, public policy, economics, African and African American studies and cultural anthropology, among others. This reflects the interdisciplinary nature of human rights as well as the approach of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.

This Fall there are 30 Human Rights courses to choose from. Here is a sample of the courses that are being offered: African Americans, Mass Incarceration and Citizenship; Immigrant Dreams, U.S. Realities; Language and Society; and Social Movements and Social Media.  Read about the featured courses or peruse the full list .
CONNECT WITH US
The Duke Human Rights Center @ the Franklin Humanities Institute brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, staff and students to promote new understandings about global human rights issues.