Professor Irving Epstein
The Illinois Wesleyan University Center for Human Rights and Social Justice was established three years ago in an effort to bring our college community together to do research, teaching, and advocacy work about human rights and social justice issues.
The Center itself serves as the home for a number of student curricular programs, has provided summer internships for students, and has sponsored talks and events by leading figures including philosopher Martha Nussbaum, producer Anthony Arnove, Pakistani journalist and activist Rafia Zakariah, director and academy award nominated screenwriter John Sayles and producer Maggie Renzi, and actor and author Jesse Eisenberg. During the fall, local activist and professor Mary Campbell gave an invited lecture about the history and operations ofthe Labryinth Outreaches to Women program and author/activist James Kilgore of the University of Illinois, spoke about his new book, Winning the Battle Against Mass Incarceration.
The Center also co-sponsored a teach-in focusing upon the Syrian refugee crisis.
Our students have interned with human rights organizations including the Constitutional Rights Foundation-Chicago, the Scholars at Risk Network in New York, and the Advocates for Human Rights organization in Minneapolis. On campus, we also house a Peace Fellows Program, a Scholars at Risk Advocacy seminar, and Undergraduate Workshops.
Participants in the Peace Fellows program take a few classes, pursue an internship either in the U.S. or overseas, and complete independent research project related to human rights issues. One of our Peace Fellows is currently investigating housing issues in the west side of Bloomington. Others have completed work examining various human rights concerns locally, nationally, and globally. Our Peace Fellows have also played an important role in participating and organizing panels for our Martin Luther King Day teach-in, an annual event at Illinois Wesleyan.
Students in our Scholars at Risk Advocacy seminar adopt the case of a scholar, student, or teacher who has been unfairly imprisoned for her/his views, research the case and examine national and international law violations along with the conditions of incarceration, and advocate for her/his release after presenting the file to national and international political and legal bodies such as the UN, State Department, Congressional offices, etc. They currently are monitoring the case of author Domingos Jose Joao de la Cruz, a scholar who is currently on trial in Angola for his advocacy of civil liberties and freedom of expression,
We also host an undergraduate human rights workshop where students and faculty together explore different dimensions of human rights issues in large and small groups, and an Undergraduate Human Rights Research Workshop, where we invite students from other liberal arts colleges to come and together share their ideas as they work to produce a finished paper or research project. The topic of this year’s research workshop, to be held on February 26-27 is “Inequality and Inequity.”
As the Center continues to evolve, we hope to create a strong relationship with Not in Our Town and offer our support for its many important initiatives. For further information about the IWU Center for Human Rights and Social Justice, feel free to visit our webpage at http://www.iwu.edu/human-rights, on facebook at: Human Rights IWU or on twitter at: https://twitter.com/HumanRightsIWU.