Human Rights Day Symposium 2025
301 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis,
MN
55455
Full Schedule
2:30 to 3:45 PM: Student Poster Session, Mondale Commons
4:00 PM: Keynote Address with Paul O’Brien, executive director, Amnesty International USA, Cowles Auditorium
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. Since 2024, the Human Rights Program and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies have begun holding an Annual Human Rights Day Symposium to commemorate this occasion.
This inspiring event brings together our human rights community, faculty, and students to explore the progress, challenges, and future of the global human rights movement. The symposium spotlights efforts to defend human rights and aims to foster collaboration and dialogue around human rights. Participants engage with emerging research, exchange ideas, and examine both the advances and ongoing challenges in protecting human dignity worldwide.
The symposium includes a poster session with presentations of student work, and a keynote address from a leader in the human rights field. The student poster session showcases projects, policies, research, and creative engagement on critical human rights issues. All interested students are welcome to apply to participate in the poster session. This year, we welcome Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, to deliver the keynote address. Paul's talk will be titled, "Human rights activism in a world of growing authoritarian practices." A reception with refreshments will follow.
Registration is not required, but will help us with planning. RSVP here.
Sponsorship
This event is made possible through the generous support of The Ohanessian Endowment Fund for Justice and Peace Studies of the Minneapolis Foundation.
Since April 2021, Paul O’Brien has been the Executive Director at Amnesty International USA, a human rights organization of 240,000 members and 125 staff. Over his career he has done human rights research and advocacy in more than 50 countries, including most recently Mexico, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He lived for 10 years in Africa working for local and international organizations, and for 5 years in Afghanistan.
Before Amnesty, Paul co-led Oxfam’s worldwide influencing network’s advocacy efforts during the Covid pandemic and led Oxfam America’s advocacy with the US government and corporations. He has been an advisor to the President of Afghanistan, the Africa Policy Advisor for CARE, and an organizer in Nairobi’s informal urban settlements. He was the President of the Echoing Green Foundation and a litigator in New York for Cravath, Swaine and Moore. He has a JD from Harvard Law School.