Celebrating the Movement, Charting Change: Human Rights Day Symposium 2024
301 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Full Schedule
- 1:00 - 2:15 PM: Student Poster Session, Mondale Commons
- 2:30 - 4:00 PM: Panel: Rights in Focus: Exploring the Intersection of Creativity and Human Rights, Humphrey Forum
- 4:00 - 4:30 PM: Networking and Refreshments, Mondale Commons
- 4:30 - 6:00 PM: Keynote Address: International Law and Justice in a Time of Genocide, by Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, Humphrey Forum
- 6:00 - 7:00 PM: Reception, Mondale Commons
Each year, the international community observes Human Rights Day on December 10, honoring the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This landmark document set forth a vision of equality, justice, and dignity for all.
In celebration of Human Rights Day this year, the Human Rights Program will debut its first annual symposium titled, Celebrating the Movement, Charting Change. This inspiring event brings together members of the human rights community, faculty, and students from across the University of Minnesota to explore the progress, challenges, and future of the human rights movement. The symposium will spotlight efforts to defend human rights, featuring student poster presentations, a faculty panel and keynote address. Participants will engage with emerging research, exchange ideas, and examine both the advances and the ongoing challenges in the global human rights movement.
The student poster session will feature projects, policies, research, and creative engagement on critical human rights issues, offering fresh perspectives and solutions. Student presenters include undergraduate, graduate, and professional students from across the university.
The panel discussion, Rights in Focus: Exploring the Intersection of Creativity and Human Rights, will present cutting-edge work focusing on creativity in the human rights space. Panelists include UMN Faculty: Luis Ramos-Garcia (UMN Graduate Studies and Spanish and Portuguese Studies), Emily Winderman (Communication Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies), Sonja Kuftinec (Theater Arts and Dance), Brenda Child (American Studies) and Christine Baumler (Art).
The keynote address will be delivered by Dr. Simon Adams, President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture. Adams will examine the possibilities and limits of international law and justice in the context of genocide. His address will also draw connections between human rights violations, mass atrocities, and genocide, stressing the need for global cooperation on prevention, accountability, and repairing harm. Adams will draw on his personal experience in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Rohingya genocide case at the International Court of Justice. He will reflect on avenues under international law for responding to Gaza. The talk will conclude with reflections on the state of international justice and the human rights movement.
Throughout the day, attendees will be inspired to honor past achievements in human rights while critically examining present-day issues, ultimately paving a way for a more effective, just, and inclusive future.
This event is free to attend. Registration is requested, but not required.
For students interested in displaying their research and work in the poster session, please visit this page.
This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for Global Studies, the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Global Minnesota.
Featured Speaker
Dr. Simon Adams
Dr. Simon Adams is President and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, the largest international organization that treats survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide.
Dr. Adams previously served as Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect for a decade, where he led advocacy at the United Nations and with various governments to help prevent crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. He has also worked extensively with human rights defenders around the world, including in Syria, Myanmar, Iraq, Democratic Republic of the Congo and other conflict zones. Between 1994 and 2002, Dr. Adams worked with former IRA prisoners in support of the Northern Ireland peace process. He is also a former member of the international anti-apartheid movement and of the African National Congress in South Africa.
Additional Event Speakers
Panel: Rights in Focus: Exploring the Intersection of Creativity and Human Rights
Dr. Luis A. Ramos-Garcia has Ph.D. from The University of Texas and teaches at the University of Minnesota in Spanish and Portuguese Studies. He is the Director of The State of Iberoamerican Studies Series: Human Rights and Theater. His research connects Latin American art, literature, music, theater, and dance with human rights, political grassroots movements, popular culture theory, interdisciplinary arts, activism, and shantytown cultural traits. Dr. Ramos- Garcia has published widely on these topics and he has received numerous awards. He has been a member of Voice to Vision, a Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Art Project since 2014.
Dr. Sonja Arsham Kuftinec has been Professor of Theatre at the University of Minnesota since 1998. She has published widely on community-based theater. From 1995-2005 she developed several projects with youth in the Balkans and Middle East. Additional research focuses on infused pedagogy and organizational culture at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, arts literacy, and creative engagements with contested memory. Current projects explore the intersection between theater, pharmacy, and medicine through collaboratively devised and often interactive productions. Her most recent research explores the intersection between queer Ballroom and musical theater via a radical reimagining of Cats. She additionally facilitates projects with local theater companies such as zAmya (a homeless/housed group), Sod House, and Speaking Out Collective.
Dr. Brenda J. Child is a Northrop Professor and former Chair of the Departments of American Studies and American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota.Child is the author of several books in American Indian history. Child Child is also the author of a best-selling bi-lingual book for children, Bowwow Powwow (2018), and the forthcoming BlueBearies She edited a book, Ojibwe and Ocheti Sakowin Artists and Knowledge Keepers (Minnesota, 2024) with Howard Oransky, and curated an exhibit of the same title that was at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota in January to March 2024.
She was a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian (2013-18) and was President of the Native American & Indigenous Studies Association (2017-18). Child was born on the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota. She was part of a committee developing a new constitution for the 15,000- member nation. She lives with her husband, the Mille Lacs Ojibwe artist Steven Premo, and family in St. Paul and Bemidji, Minnesota.