Human rights at a crossroad
Ten years ago, the task of bringing together Harvard’s many centers and departments under the umbrella of human rights studies seemed daunting. So daunting, in fact, that a University-wide committee was created to bolster the mission and monitor its progress. “The idea of integrating human rights across the University at the time seemed a rather ambitious, even fanciful one,” Jacqueline Bhabha, Harvard’s adviser on human rights education, told a crowd at a private reception on Tuesday evening (Oct. 12). The question then, Bhabha recalled, was “Why should we integrate?” The buzzing room at the Harvard Faculty Club was proof that the University’s human rights community has largely bypassed any initial problems with collaboration. But the evening’s speakers, including Bhabha, raised an even bigger question: Where does one go after initial success? The decade-old University Committee on Human Rights Studies was disbanded in June, having largely achieved its goals of promoting cross-disciplinary research and...