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HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
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Human Rights Beyond the Headlines: Human Rights Violations in War
Woven Teaching is excited to share our latest edition of Human Rights Beyond the Headlines. This month’s topic: Human Rights Violations in War
Created to support educators in helping young people navigate the current events that impact their lives, Human Rights Beyond the Headlines will provide background information about key current events and strategies for discussing them with young people, including how to understand them through the wider lens of justice and human rights.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
Celebrate Pride Month and Juneteenth with These Human Writes Blogs
The Human Writes team invites you to explore our student-written blogs on queerness and emancipation. Zukaina Al-Mohamed’s piece, “The Necessity of Comedic Movies for Queer Folk,” explores the importance of lighthearted queer-focused media in the formation of positive queer identities, while in “Seeking Reform in the United States Juvenile Justice System,” recent graduate Madelynn Shaw examines the over-imprisonment of youth in America and the continuing work needed for collective liberation.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
Episode 76 with Dr. Pedro Gonzalez is available on Human Rights Education Now!
Dr. Pedro Gonzalez is a leading human rights advocate and Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Northern Arizona University. His expertise spans criminology, criminal justice, and comparative cultural studies. Pedro’s doctoral work in Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas informs his teaching on the Holocaust, human rights, and Latin American and Mexican history.
Pedro’s research centers on human rights, genocide, migration, memory, and state-sponsored violence in Latin America. He has held fellowships with Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, serves on the Faculty Advisory Council at Seven Generation Indigenous Knowledge Center, and received the 2025 Ed O’Brien Human Rights Education Award, recognized by Human Rights Educators USA.
Episode Summary
Dr. Pedro Gonzalez traces his commitment to human rights education to childhood experiences in Mexico City, where encounters with police repression, labor unrest, and stories of torture and disappearance left lasting impressions. He explains how his academic study and mentorship enabled him to connect these memories to broader frameworks of ethics, history, and advocacy, framing the episode around his journey from personal experience to professional engagement.
The episode centers on how Latin American history, critical pedagogy, and ethics shape Pedro’s approach as an educator and scholar. He discusses weaving human rights into his university courses by encouraging dialogue, empathy, and respect for human dignity. Highlighting his work on forced disappearances in Mexico, Pedro shares how he uses photography and public exhibits to preserve memory and resist erasure—connecting remembrance and activism to resistance against state violence, exemplified by his links to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.
Pedro addresses contemporary challenges in the United States and Mexico, focusing on migration, dehumanization, nationalism, and polarization, and their relevance to human rights education. He describes teaching migration and human rights through historical, political, and cultural perspectives, emphasizing migrants’ lived experiences and structural causes of displacement. The episode concludes with reflections on hope, ethics, and responsibility, drawing from Emmanuel Levinas and underscoring memory and solidarity as central to advancing human rights education.
Topics discussed:
- Origins of Dr. Pedro Gonzalez’s work in human rights and human rights education
- Childhood experiences with repression and violence in Mexico City
- Latin American history, ethics, and human rights pedagogy
- Integrating human rights into university teaching
- Forced disappearances and photography as testimony
- Memory, memorialization, and resistance to historical erasure
- Cultural heritage and human rights
- Migration, borders, and nationalism
- Humanizing migrants through education
- Dehumanization, polarization, and digital media
- Emmanuel Levinas, ethics, and responsibility toward others
- Hope, dignity, and solidarity in human rights work
Full topic listing available for PDF download HERE.
Listen on our Buzzsprout podcast website HERE.
All episodes of Human Rights Education Now! are available on:
Buzzsprout, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, and the HRE USA website,
Thank you for supporting the Human Rights Education NOW! podcast!
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
Job opportunity: Researcher, US Externalization at Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Division–are now hiring a new Externalization Researcher to investigate and expose human rights abuses relating to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers.
The role will initially focus on US government efforts to block entry or access to asylum, to externalize migration controls and outsource asylum processing, and to use third countries and external territories in deportations. The full job description can be found on our webpage at: https://lnkd.in/gTKcMMwg.
Job Application for Researcher, US Externalization at Human Rights Watch
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
The 2026 New Voices 4 Global Solutions Essay Contest is open
Eighty years after the UN Charter was ratified, the problems that cross borders have outrun the system built to handle them. We want to hear how a new generation would fix it.The 2026 New Voices 4 Global Solutions Essay Contest is now open. We are inviting students across the United States, ages 18 to 30, to make the case for what a reformed United Nations could actually look like.
This year’s theme is From Charter to Change: Reimagining Global Governance through Article 109. Article 109 is the rarely used provision that lets member states convene a general conference to review and update the Charter. The prompt asks two things: where the current UN system falls short, and what specific reform you would put on the table if that conference were called.
The grand prize is a trip to Italy. The winner receives an all-expenses-paid trip to the 2026 Ventotene International Seminar, held August 30 to September 4 on the island where the modern federalist movement began. CGS covers travel from the US, transport to the island, and all board and lodging. The winning essay is published in our flagship journal, Mondial, in front of the global World Federalist Movement network.Last year’s winner, Isabella Grace Smith, put it this way after the seminar: it showed her how much weight young voices can carry in shaping what comes next. Her essay runs in the Summer 2026 issue of Mondial.
The details
Essays run up to 2,000 words, follow APA style, and stay non-partisan. Work you wrote for a class is eligible if you flag it. Generative AI is not permitted and means disqualification. Submit by email to outreach@globalsolutions.org using the exact subject line provided in the guidelines.
Deadline: July 12, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT.
Not sure where to start? Join our free online workshop on Friday, June 19 at 12 PM EST for topic inspiration and submission guidance.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
New Books for Summer Reading
Summer is just around the corner! We encourage you to explore our new releases booklist (and all of our booklists at SocialJusticeBooks.org) for your summer reading.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
Teaching for Black Lives Study Group June–July | Online
This summer, the Zinn Education Project will host and facilitate a Teaching for Black Lives study group for educators across the United States. Using the Rethinking Schools book Teaching for Black Lives, educators will explore how to teach about racism, resistance, and joy. Since 2020, the Zinn Education Project has supported educators leading their own local Teaching for Black Lives study groups and this year, for the first time, will offer a virtual opportunity for pre-K–12 educators in any U.S. city to participate in this “transformative experience,” as many past participants reported.
The group will meet at 4:00 pm PT/ 7:00 pm ET on Tuesdays: June 23, June 30, July 14, and July 21.
Applications due by June 10.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
Webinar: ‘Education is my weapon’: Algerian women’s rights in higher education
Wednesday, 17 June 2026 16.30-17.30 (London)
Join HRER author Dr Khadidja Kelalech for our next research webinar addressing how media misrepresentations impact women’s right to access education in Algeria. Khadidja reflects on how social media posts, on channels such as Facebook and YouTube, impact women’s right to access higher education in Algeria. She will consider changes needed to foster an equitable environment where women can safely study and participate in university life.
Read Khadidja’s full article here:
https://doi.org/10.1080/25355406.2025.2509493
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
The Flowers Fund Supported HRE USA Members to Present at the 2026 IAHRE Conference
The 2026 Flowers Fund grants supported registration costs for Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, Jake Skrzypiec, Emma Tolliver, and Sarah Wierderecht to deliver a poster session and paper presentations at the 2026 International Association for Human Rights Education (IAHRE) in Münster, Germany from May 25-27, 2026.
Seven members of Human Rights Educators USA delivered the following sessions:
* Collaborative Human Rights Learning: Permeable, Portable, Pervasive, and Persistent – Glenn Mitoma, Columbia University, and Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, HRE USA
* Re-Imagining Student Advocacy as Human Rights Action: How Educators and Institutions Can Support Students as Humanitarians on Campus – Emma Tolliver, University of Washington and 2024 Edmonds Fellow
* Re-Imagining School Change: Leveraging Human Rights Education for Tomorrow’s Democracy – Ian McGregor, University of Nevada, Jake Skrzypiec, Manchester High School and University of Connecticut, and Sarah Wiederrecht, Manchester High School
* Imagining before Re-Imagining: Origins and Prospects of Human Rights Education at Columbia University – Glenn Mitoma and Timothy Wyman-McCarthy, Columbia University
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
HRE USA is a project of the Center for Transformative Action.
HRE USA 