Human Rights Advocacy: Seminar
Spring term, Block H
M 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Clinical Professor James Cavallaro
2 classroom credits LAW-94740A
2, 3, or 4 required clinical credits LAW-94740C
In the space of fifty years, human rights advocates have transformed a marginal utopian ideal into a central element of global discourse, if not practice. This course examines the actors and organizations behind this remarkable development. What are the origins of the human rights movement and where is it headed? What does it mean to be a human rights activist? What are the main challenges and dilemmas facing those engaged in rights promotion and defense? This seminar introduces students to human rights advocacy through participation in supervised projects, as well as readings, class discussion, role-playing and participatory evaluation of advocacy strategies. For those students that enroll in clinical work in conjunction with the Seminar, projects through the Human Rights Program involve work individually or in small groups in collaboration with human rights NGOs and/or before inter-governmental bodies.
This course will expose students to some of the practical manifestations of the main debates and dilemmas within the human rights movement. These will include several of the ethical and strategic issues that arise in the course of doing fact-finding and advocacy and balancing the often differing agendas of the western international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and their counterparts in the (frequently non-western) developing world.
Class sessions will focus on analysis of advocacy from the recent history of the human rights movement, but will also include role-playing sessions and student-led discussions of their clinical projects.
This class can only be taken in conjunction with 2, 3, or 4 clinical credits (the clinical component is required). Clinical placements are with the International Human Rights Clinic of the Human Rights Program. Students must enroll through clinical registration. Please refer to the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs website (http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/clinical) for clinical course registration dates and early add/drop deadlines.