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General Themes:
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Since its inception, in addition to raising the visibility of human rights on campus, the Human Rights Initiative has focused on some of the following themes:
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✴fostering critical thinking about fundamental concepts and accepted history in human rights.
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✴anticipating human rights challenges of the future.
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✴developing connections between civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights.
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✴anchoring human rights in detailed knowledge of place and time, building on some of UW-Madison's strengths. Our programming endeavors in different ways to touch on at least one of these four themes.
Mission and History
Launched in 2007, the Human Rights Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a cross-campus project to stimulate new research and teaching on human rights. Within the past decade, human rights have captured the attention of a wide range of students and faculty on campus, reflecting a long-standing commitment to social justice at UW-Madison. The Human Rights Initiative seeks to coordinate and enhance intellectual interest in human rights and to develop cutting-edge ideas about human rights for the 21st Century.
Mary Robinson (Former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) publicly launching the Human Rights Initiative, September 2008
Florence Chenoweth and Scott Straus, Directors, introducing President Robinson and publicly launching the Human Rights Initiative, September 2008
Sawyer Seminar on Human Rights, 2010-2011
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Human Rights Initiative a major grant to conduct a Sawyer Seminar on the theme of “Vulnerability and Resilience: Rethinking Human Rights for the 21st Century.” For more information, please click here.
Through this grant, the Human Rights Initiative is offering a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Human Rights. For more information and to apply, please click here.