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Human rights curriculum for the 21st century

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"The Stanford Report" covered the recently launched Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative, which brings human rights curriculum into the classrooms of California community colleges to transform students into globally-conscious citizens. Piloted in partnership with the Program on Human Rights, the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies, the Initiative appoints human rights fellows to develop new curriculum for broader application in California and beyond.

Stanford helps bring human rights to community college classrooms

Globalization has meant that the whole world is connected to the whole world's problems. Yet most of today's students live in a world no bigger than a cell phone keypad.

So how do you explain to them that the clothes on their backs may be sewn by slave labor in Asia, or how international human trafficking may be behind an Internet porn site?

Tim Maxwell, an award-winning poet who teaches at the College of San Mateo, said the basic task of reading is becoming harder each year for the Facebook generation. "To bring unpleasant and challenging ideas into their world is really difficult," he said. He described "young people's increasing use of social media and other technologies that, rather [than] widening their worlds, effectively narrows them" to what is pleasurably entertaining.

The remedy? In an unusual move, Stanford is linking arms with educators in California community colleges for a four-year project called Stanford Human Rights Education Initiative.  Following a conference last June on "Teaching Human Rights in an International Context," which launched the project, Stanford has named eight new "Human Rights Fellows" from California's community colleges. Maxwell is one of them.

For more than 12.4 million young Americans, teaching takes place in one of the nearly 1,200 community colleges across the nation – and about a quarter of those community colleges are in California. But few major universities have engaged these institutions.

The new initiative will train students to be engaged as global citizens, said William Hanson, another fellow, who holds a law degree from Columbia and teaches at Chabot College. "We have to find a way to wriggle in."

With a stipend and "visiting scholar" status, the human rights fellows will work with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the Division of International Comparative and Area Studies (ICA) to develop human rights curricula, plan human rights conferences and develop the initiative's website. The human rights curriculum they design could, they hope, seed similar programs across the country and the world.

My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics. Helen Stacy

"My hope is that human rights will form a central part of every college curriculum" – not only as a topic, but as a lens through which to see all topics, said Helen Stacy, director of the program on human rights at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

She said that human rights is typically pigeonholed as a "soft subject" in the social sciences or humanities, but such funneling "misses engineering students and IT students and math students."

For example, she said, students of computer science or statistics could be engaged in mapping human trafficking or drug smuggling. Young economists could study the supply-and-demand dynamics of crime.

The effort "to speak a language that speaks to all of the disciplines" could result in a human rights curriculum that extends into the high school and even the elementary school level, Stacy said. Moreover, the planned website with an online curriculum could help educators the world over – even an isolated educator sitting in Uzbekistan, she said.

For the Stanford faculty and staff who created the course, the beginnings go back a long way and are the fruition of years of experience, research and thought.

Gary Mukai's experience of human rights violations was firsthand: the director of SPICE recalls a childhood as a farm worker whose Japanese-American parents, also farm workers, had been detained by their country during World War II. "I grew up puzzled about many of their stories, and their stories certainly influenced my interest in developing educational materials about civil and human rights for young students," he said.

For instance, he recalled uncles and other relatives who volunteered or were drafted by the U.S. Army from behind barbed wire. Or stories about his relatives who received posthumous medals for their sons' service while they still lived behind barbed wire.

Richard Roberts, a Stanford professor of history, remembered reading William Hinton's Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, years ago. The questions it raised fascinated him: "Who will teach the teacher? Where do we learn? Who do we learn from? Who has the power to teach?"

He said universities typically teach an "isolated, really small segment" of the general population. Roberts, who studies domestic violence and human trafficking in Africa, said that when it comes to human rights, "That's not enough. We have to go beyond the rarefied segment."

One of the people on this frontline of teaching is Enrique Luna, a history instructor at Gilroy's Gavilan College. For him, Stanford represents something of a return: his father had been a cook at the university's dorms. Now Luna is an educator who looks for opportunities for students to participate with direct aid in their local communities and also with groups such as the Zapatistas of Chiapas and the Tarahumara of northern Mexico.

To reach his students, he said, he creates loops "back and forth between reading and doing." When students are doing, they have a reason to read, and when they read, they are able to fix their understandings through application. "They do their best work when they're doing something. That's where the other disciplines pour in," he said.

A lunchtime session last summer was popping with ideas: Hanson was enthusiastic about possibly broadcasting Stanford lectures on human rights on his college's television station.

Another human rights fellow, Sadie Reynolds from Cabrillo College in Aptos, was just happy for the time to think and reflect. "It's hard to articulate hopes this early in the planning. I have a selfish hope of learning about this model so I can apply it in the classroom." She said she will present what she's learned at Stanford to a workshop at Cabrillo.

Those on the frontline of teaching don't get such opportunities very often:  "It's difficult to find time to develop this at community colleges," she said.

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Program on Human Rights Collaboratory: Cultural Heritage - The biopolitics of human rights

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The Program on Human Rights Collaboratory Series is an interdisciplinary investigation of human rights in the humanities. It is funded under the Stanford Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies as the third in a sequence of pursuing peace and security, improving governance and advancing well-being.

Pheng Cheah is professor of rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Inhuman Conditions: On Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Harvard University Press, 2006) and Spectral Nationality: Passages of Freedom from Kant to Postcolonial Literatures of Liberation (Columbia University Press, 2003), and the co-editor of several book collections, including Derrida and the Time of the Political (Duke University Press, 2009), Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson (Routledge, 2003) and Cosmopolitics - Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation (University of Minnesota Press, 1998).  He is currently completing a  book on theories of the world and world literature from the postcolonial South in an era of global financialization.  Also in progress is a book on globalization and world cinema from the three Chinas, focusing on the films of Jia Zhangke, Tsai Ming-liang and Fruit Chan.

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Elias Muhanna

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Assistant Professor at Brown University (formerly Visiting Scholar at Stanford)
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Elias Muhanna is an Assistant Professor at Brown University. In 2011-12, he was a Non-resident Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Program on Arab Reform & Democracy. He is also the author of QifaNabki.com, a blog devoted to Lebanese political affairs, and has written extensively on contemporary cultural and political issues in the Middle East for several general-interest publications, including The Nation, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The National, Mideast Monitor, World Politics Review, Bidoun, andTransition. In 2012, Muhanna will join the faculty of Brown University as an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature.

Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America

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The Program on Human Rights and the Center for Latin American Studies are pleased to host the Conference "Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America".

Indigenous peoples around the world have often been dispossessed of their land, leading to ongoing conflict over control and usage of land and resources. Indigenous peoples in Latin America are no exception; they are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable peoples in the region. Indigenous peoples in Latin America rank highest on underdevelopment indicators such as incarceration, illiteracy, unemployment, poverty and disease. They face discrimination in schools and are exploited in the workplace. Their sacred lands and artifacts are plundered from them. In many Latin American countries, indigenous peoples are not even permitted to study their own language.

The Stanford Spring conference “Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America,” brings scholars from all disciplines to examine the common trends, actors, challenges and changes among indigenous populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Alejandro Toledo President of Peru from 2001 to 2006 Keynote Speaker
Eliane Karp-Toledo Anthropologist, Economist and former First Lady of Peru (2001 to 2006) Keynote Speaker
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Globalization and How Its Many Forms Contribute to Human Trafficking

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Jyoti Sanghera is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Representative in Nepal. She has been with Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for close to a decade serving as the Adviser on trafficking in Geneva for several years and subsequently as the Senior Human Rights Adviser in Sri Lanka. 

Ms. Sanghera has also worked with UNICEF both in South Asia and New York and with UNDP’s regional office in New Delhi. She has worked on human rights protection issues in relation to women, migrants, and other discriminated groups in conflict and post conflict situations for the past three decades in various capacities, including with key NGOs in North America and Asia.

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The Program on Human Rights welcomes new program manager

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce that Nadejda Marques has joined the Program on Human Rights (PHR) to serve as the new program manager. In this capacity, Marques will coordinate a range of interdisciplinary initiatives and events, support new research projects, and spearhead PHR's outreach and fundraising efforts. Marques will work together with PHR Program Director and FSI Senior Fellow, Helen Stacy to support the conceptualization, design, and conduct of PHR's research initiatives, advancing the mission and visibility of PHR activities at Stanford University and beyond.

Marques joins the PHR from Boston where she worked as research coordinator for the Cost of Inaction Project at the François-Bagnoud Xavier Center for Health and Human Rights based at the Harvard School of Public Health. Working for the Cost of Inaction Project, Marques was responsible for researching and analyzing the cost of inaction of public programs and actions that help reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS on children in Angola.

"Nadejda Marques' training as an economist, her 15 years of work in human rights, including her work in the field in Angola and in founding the Brazilian human rights NGO Justiça Global bring valuable experience and expertise to the Program on Human Rights at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law," said PHR director Helen Stacy. "Even more importantly, Nadejda's commitment to bottom-up human rights reform means that she is acutely aware of human rights practice as a multi-faceted and inter-disciplinary activity. I am thrilled to welcome Nadejda to the Program on Human Rights as a thought partner to expand the reach and scope of our programming."

Marques holds degrees in economics (UNA, Brazil) and international finance (FGV, Brazil). She has worked as a special correspondent for the Washington Post in Latin America, and has taught languages and Latin American culture at Harvard, Bentley College, and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For the past decade, Marques has worked in the field of human rights, most notably with Human Rights Watch in Brazil and Angola. Marques is fluent in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She serves as a consultant and board member for leading human rights NGOs in Brazil and Angola.

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Policy perspectives from the Obama Administration

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Jeremy M. Weinstein is Associate Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He serves as director of the Center for African Studies, and is an affiliated faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.

Weinstein recently returned to Stanford after serving as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Among other issues, Weinstein was centrally involved in the development of President Obama’s Policy Directive on Global Development and associated efforts to reform and strengthen USAID, promote economic growth, and increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance across the board; led efforts at the White House to develop a robust international anti-corruption agenda, which included the creation of the G-20 Action Plan on Anti-Corruption, the design and launch of the Open Government Partnership, and the successful legislative passage and subsequent internationalization of a ground-breaking extractive industries disclosure requirement; and played a significant role in developing the Administration’s policy in response to the Arab Spring, including focused work on Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and others. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, served as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.

His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review. Selected publications include: “Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War” (APSR 2006), which received the Sage Prize and Gregory Luebbert Award, and “Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision (APSR 2007), which received the Heinz Eulau Award and the Michael Wallerstein Award. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007. Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University.

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Jeremy Weinstein Associate Professor of Political Science, Senior Fellow at FSI Speaker Affiliated faculty member at CDDRL
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Educate Girls Globally: a New Strategy for Educating Girls and Counterinsurgency Warfare in the Most Difficult Environments

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A. Lawrence Chickering is a political and social entrepreneur and writer whose work has focused on empowering citizens to increase their roles in public institutions from government schools to foreign policy—while also contributing to economic and social progress.

To this end, Chickering has founded or co-founded several public policy organizations that promote “transpartisan” reforms in both the U.S.and globally. His most recent organization, Educate Girls Globally (EGG), works with the government in the tribal state of Rajasthan inIndia, promoting cultural change not only in traditional communities, but also in government bureaucratic cultures.

Chickering has focused his recent writing on the challenges of policy toward the “weak states” that have become the new priority concerns of foreign policy.  At a time when the new threats to security come from non-state actors, he believes that both development and counterinsurgency warfare (COIN) need civil society organizations (CSOs) to play a greatly expanded role in promoting change by empowering citizens.

In a series of articles he has written for the Small Wars Journal (SWJ), Chickering has raised questions about the government’s capacity to reform its institutions and policies, and embrace CSOs as active partners.  A major problem, he argues, is that the foreign policy community, both inside and outside the government, knows almost nothing about civil society and how it can promote change from “inside” societies.  That explains why foreign policy continues to be directed entirely toward governments, assuming that weak states are strong, and asking them to do things they have no capacity to do.

Chickering stresses the importance of empowering people rather than only helping them.  EGG provides no financial incentives.  Both its school reform and community projects result from empowerment alone.  Together with working in government schools, this allows EGG to operate at very large, strategic scales and low costs.  This commitment, however, conflicts with the overwhelming objectives of donor and philanthropic organizations. 

Chickering believes that the troubled transition from dictatorship to democracy, now underway in Egypt and other countries, could have been largely prevented by an indigenous civil society strategy promoting trust, expanding participation in government, and building human infrastructure for transition.  He also believes that a strong civil society strategy is the essential, missing element in efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. 

To show what is possible in this arena, EGG is currently negotiating with the U.S. Central Command to implement a demonstration project in Afghanistan.  The experience in Rajasthan shows how the model empowers people to take responsibility for their own security, in addition to other forms of progress. 

Chickering’s coauthored book, Strategic Foreign Assistance: Civil Society in International Security, and his more recent SWJ writings, present the most complete statements of his thinking about how civil society initiatives can be used to promote economic, social, and political change in these tribal societies. He believes that new ways of thinking about foreign and national security policy need to be built on a combination of civil society initiatives and new thinking about the strategic uses of communication to influence people’s perceptions. 

Chickering has authored two “transpartisan” books on American politics. His book Beyond Left and Right (1993) drew wide praise across the U.S. political spectrum, and his 2008 book Voice of the People, coauthored with James S. Turner, includes two chapters on foreign policy.

Mr. Chickering is a graduate of StanfordUniversity and theYale Law School. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.


 

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A. Lawrence Chickering Political and Social Entrepreneur and Writer Speaker
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Michael McFaul is the former director of CDDRL and deputy director of FSI at Stanford University. He also is the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Iran Democracy Project, as well as Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. 

Dr. McFaul is also a non-resident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Eurasia Foundation, the Firebird Fund, Freedom House, the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX).

He is the author and editor of several monographs including, with Anders Aslund, Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough (2006) with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform (2004); with Kathryn Stoner Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (2004); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (2001); and with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (1995). He serves on the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Post-Soviet Affairs, and The Washington Quarterly. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

Professor McFaul comments frequently in the national media on American foreign policy and international politics. He has appeared on all major television and radio networks, while his opeds have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Moscow Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, The San Jose Mercury News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times and The Weekly Standard.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford where he completed his Ph.D. in International Relations in 1991.

Dr. McFaul is currently on leave serving as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he is considered to be one of the top five national security players in government (The Washington Independent).

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Michael McFaul Former Director of CDDRL and Deputy Director Speaker FSI
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Global Inequalities, Performance Gaps, and Mobile Innovations

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Abstract
Paul Kim will share his long journey that has been focused on devising, offering, and evaluating educational access to the underserved children in developing regions of the world. In shedding light on how these fortuitous events, this narrative account of educational progress and change shares the research outcomes of a variety of mobile technology-integration projects at the K-12 level including: (1) literacy development in Mexico, (2) mobile math learning in California and India, (3) executive functioning assessment in Palestine, and (4) mobile science learning in El Salvador and India. Each country and school visited has its own unique story or set of stories and outcomes that can guide future developments of mobile learning technology including educational games, e-books, and other applications.

Paul Kim is the Assistant Dean for Technology & CTO for Stanford University School of Education. He is one of researchers for Programmable Open Mobile Internet (POMI) http://pomi.stanford.edu. He has been conducting research with multidisciplinary approaches and teaching graduate courses on technology-enabled empowerment and entrepreneurship. He is also working with numerous international organizations in developing mobile empowerment solutions for extremely underserved communities in developing countries. In the higher education space, he advises investment bankers and technology ventures focused on e-learning, knowledge management, and mobile communication solutions. His due-diligence engagements include early-stage angel funding and also later-stage private equity-based investments for large education enterprises.

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