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HRE USA

A network dedicated to building a culture of human rights

Category: News and Updates

RFK HUMAN RIGHTS FEBRUARY WEBINARS

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Join Robert F Kennedy Human Rights for their upcoming virtual events with key experts discussing how to achieve human rights goals through international cooperation and collective action. 

February 18, 2021, at 3 p.m. EST: UN Sustainable Development Goals Series
We’re kicking off our webinar series about the UN Sustainable Development Goals, produced by our very own Youth Advisory Board. Our first guest will be Dr. Glenn Mitoma, assistant professor of human rights and education at the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute and the inaugural Director of Dodd Impact, who’ll guide a discussion about how international human rights objectives are established and how accountability among individual nations is maintained. 

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February 25, 2021, at 10 a.m. EST: Nizami Ganjavi Speaker Series
Join us for the second installment of our speaker series in partnership with the Nizami Ganjavi International Center. We’ll feature Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, an environmental scientist who was the first female president of Mauritius, and hear her firsthand account of advocating for human rights, justice, and international diplomacy.

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February 25, 2021, at 5 p.m. EST: UN Sustainable Development Goals Series
During this second installment of our UN Sustainable Development Goals webinar series, we’ll hear from activist Cara Kennedy-Cuomo, who has joined RFK Human Rights to work on several key initiatives, including fighting on behalf of farmworkers and protesting the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar. 

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Painting a Just Picture: Art and Activism

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EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Time: 3:30 – 4:30 pm CT
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  FREE

This webinar, from Learning for Justice and co-hosted by experts from the National Gallery of Art, will offer new understandings of American visual art and its role in helping us understand our history. You’ll also learn how art has been integral to activism and fights for justice. The webinar will cover how to integrate the visual arts into content areas such as ELA and social studies, including an overview of strategies for cross-curricular collaboration. Finally, using works from the National Gallery of Art and K-12 students, you will receive an overview of project and lesson ideas and discuss strategies for engaging in arts instruction. This webinar will help educators across all content areas create a more diverse and powerful curriculum.

Register here

Black History Month Books for All Ages

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From First Book

In 2020, educators and avid readers collectively recognized the urgency of reading anti-racist books and exercising self-education. It was apparent, perhaps more so than other years, why Black stories matter, especially in the classroom. While, in 2021 and beyond, recognizing Black pain and struggle remains an important focus, the curators of the First Book Marketplace for educators also work to strike a balance—highlighting books that celebrate Black joy, excellence, and progress.

Lori Prince, director of merchandising at First Book shared, “We want to make sure that all readers see the full breadth of the Black experience, not just stories of trauma and oppression.”

We may celebrate Black History Month in February, but Black history is now—this minute, this year, this decade. Give readers of any age the tools they need to learn more with First Book’s 28 books for 28 days, a hand-picked selection of fantastic reads, designed especially for educators.

>> Access booklist

IJHRE Issue 5 – HRE and Black Liberation

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Situating Black activism and movement building in its historical context, this special issue of the International Journal of Human Rights Education (IJHRE) features articles, essays, commentaries, and book reviews that put the longstanding call for Black lives to matter and the quest for Black liberation in conversation with human rights education as a field of scholarship and practice.

The IJHRE is an independent, double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal dedicated to the examination of the theory, philosophy, research, and praxis central to the field of human rights education. This journal seeks to be a central location for critical thought in the field as it continues to expand.

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The Cause of All Humanity – The ICC

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EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Friday, February 19, 2021
Time: 10 am – 11 am ET
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  FREE

Join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for a presentation by Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, President of the International Criminal Court on “the case of all humanity” Why the United States should support the ICC.” His talk will be followed by a panel discussion.

PANELISTS
Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji | President, International Criminal Court
Dr. Geoff Dancy | Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Tulane University
Dr. Phuong Pham | Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director of Evaluation and Implementation Science, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI)
Dr. Kathryn Sikkink (Moderator) | Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Register

Teach Amanda Gorman’s 2021 Inauguration Poem, The Hill We Climb”

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National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” written for the 2021 inauguration, presents a great opportunity for educators and students to discuss the ways creative expression can help us think about the meaning of democracy. Check out these great lessons below, to get inspired. 

Workshop Series on Decolonial & Anti-Racist Pedagogy

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EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Friday, February 12, 2021
Time: 12:00 -1:30 pm ET
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  Free

Description:
A virtual workshop series that will introduce attendees to the theory, historical context, and necessity for decolonial and anti-racist teaching, as well as offer practical tips on how to implement these approaches in the classroom. The series is presented in partnership by Florida Atlantic University’s Peace Justice Human Rights Initiative, the University of Connecticut’s Human Rights Institute (HRI) and the University and College Consortium on Human Rights Education (UCCHRE). See workshop descriptions and registration links below:

  • Friday, February 12, 12:00-1:30 p.m.: Workshop #1: “Decolonial Pedagogy: Theory, Historical Context, and Necessity.” Hosted by Bianca Nightengale-Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry at FAU. The workshop facilitators are Saran Stewart, Associate Professor of Education at the University of Connecticut; MilagrosCastillo-Montoya, Ed.D., Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Connecticut; and Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, UCCHRE, Human Rights Education Consultant and doctoral candidate in Leadership for Intercultural and International Education at the University of Minnesota. Register in advance for this meeting: here. Click here to download the event flyer.
  • Friday, February 26, 12:00-1:30 p.m.: Workshop #2: “Decolonial Pedagogy: Practical Implementation.” Hosted and facilitated by Bianca Nightengale-Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry at FAU. Register in advance for this meeting: here.
  • Monday, March 15, 12:00-1:30 p.m.: Workshop #3: “Anti-Racist Pedagogy: Theory, Historical Context, and Necessity.” Hosted by Bianca Nightengale-Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry at FAU. The workshop facilitator is David Bynes, Assistant Director, Office for Diversity Education and Training, Center for IDEAS, FAU and doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction within FAU’s College of Education. Register in advance for this meeting: here.
  • Monday, March 22, 12:00-1:30 p.m.: Workshop #4: “Anti-Racist Pedagogy: Practical Implementation.” Hosted and facilitated by Bianca Nightengale-Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Curriculum, Culture, and Educational Inquiry at FAU. Register in advance for this meeting: here.

Using Puppetry to Teach Human Rights

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EVENT DETAILS: 
When: Friday, February 19, 2021
Time: 4 pm – 5pm ET
Where: Live Stream on Zoom
Cost:  FREE

Description:
Puppetry is a proven technique in education and has been used to teach a variety of topics to children of all ages. This workshop will employ the ancient puppetry technique of shadow puppetry and demonstrate how one can create a shadow show in the classroom with simple materials such as cardboard, straw and a flashlight. 

This workshop will focus on the issue of immigration using the book La Frontera: El Viaje Con Papa/My Journey with Papa by Deborah Mills, Alfredo Alva, and Claudia Navarro. Many young people do not know or understand the importance when people decide to leave their home country for another.  This workshop will open dialogue not only on the tough decisions made in leaving one’s own country, but the difficulties of being an immigrant in a new country.

Presenter:
Neda Izadi received her B.F.A of puppetry from the University of Sooreh, Tehran in 2010.  Born in Tehran, Iran, Neda moved to the United States to study puppetry in the department of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut in 2017.  She graduated with an M.F.A in Drama with a focus on Puppetry in 2020. She began working with Dodd Impact in July 2020 on human rights educational workshops for high school teachers and students.

>> Learn more and register

This event is sponsored by Dodd Human Rights Impact and Human Rights Educators USA

Racial Justice Resource Collection for Educators

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As part of our commitment to anti-racism and non-discrimination, HRE USA has created a Racial Justice Resource Collection to help educators engage their students on issues of racism through a human rights lens.

Although race is now generally understood to be a social construct without scientific significance among human beings, concepts of race continue to affect people’s lived experience through racism, the institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination based on differences of what is presumed to be race. 

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD, Race Convention, 1965) addresses all forms of distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race as a violation of fundamental human rights and defines “racial discrimination” to mean:

… any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms …

The collection was developed in partnership with contributing members of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Human Rights Education Community and Human Rights Educators USA (HRE USA)

 >> Access collection

We are grateful for the generous support of our members, individual donors, and The Puffin Foundation Ltd
The core values of HRE USA and its partner organizations include transparency and critical thinking skills. We believe that human rights--and human rights education--belong to everyone, and that the full realization of human rights means that access to human rights education materials must never be conditioned upon the subscription to any particular religious faith, ideology, political affiliation, or membership in any particular organization and that any organizational connections should be openly acknowledged.