Letter from the Director

Welcome to the Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (HRHA) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Thank you for stopping by our online home.

As I write this, the 2019-2020 academic year is well underway, and we are in the midst of another exciting year of human rights teaching, research, and outreach on our campus. I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on what we have built together and look ahead to the future of human rights work at UNL.

Over the past few years, we have revamped our transdisciplinary human rights minor for undergraduate students to better prepare them for 21st century careers in human rights and justice. We have fostered cutting-edge faculty and graduate student human rights research on topics as diverse as genocide and mass atrocity and equitable access to healthcare. We also have connected with partners in our community and around the globe to translate our research and teaching into actionable information that can help tackle problems such as human trafficking and the stability of the international justice regime.

Together, we do this work every day. As we look to 2020, we will continue to sponsor research that uses an interdisciplinary human rights framework to enhance our understanding of today's most pressing problems. We will continue to offer courses and programming that help students not only to understand current human rights issues but also to have the knowledge and skills they need to go out and tackle them. And, we will continue to collaborate with our partners to bring our work on campus into the community. We look forward to doing this work with you in 2020 and beyond. If you are new to this university or to human rights at UNL, please come take a look at all that HRHA has to offer.

• For undergraduate students, we offer an undergraduate minor, as well as experiential learning opportunities, whether that's volunteering at a civic organization in Lincoln, working side-by-side with a professor on a human rights-related research project, or pursuing your passion for human rights while studying abroad. Our students go on to exciting careers in international relations, business, government service, education and more. Regardless of their career paths, HRHA alumni carry with them the curiosity for learning and passion for human rights that we foster at the University of Nebraska and in this program.
• For graduate students, we provide a graduate specialization in human rights and the chance to work with leading human rights scholars in a range of disciplines, from law to journalism, history to English.
• For faculty, we provide funding to support visting lecturers, workshops, and research symposia, and we welcome your applications for this type of research support. We also serve as a network of scholars engaged in human rights work and can help to facilitate collaborations across departments and colleges.
• For members of the community, we regularly sponsor and co-ordinate human rights programming that is free and open to the public. In particular, we are the home of UNL's Human Trafficking and Migration Initiative. We have just finished presenting a week of programming on the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women, and are looking forward to organizing a week of programming on labor trafficking for the 2020-2021 academic year-- stay tuned!

As you will see, our website is always changing and growing. We are consistently updating it, so please check back often. In the meantime, I wish you all the best for the cold months to come, and in all your human rights-related pursuits.

Best wishes,

Courtney Hillebrecht
Director, Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs
Samuel Clark Waugh Professor of International Relations
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science
Faculty Coordinator, William H. Thompson Learning Community