Introducing Mumtaaz Mahammud Hirsi, the 2024-2025 Hrant Dink Scholar

The Human Rights Program is proud to introduce our 2024-2025 Hrant Dink Memorial Human Rights Scholar, Mumtaaz Mahammud Hirsi, a second-year psychology student with minors in African American studies and public health. A member of the Human Rights Program’s Undergraduate Working Group, Mumtaaz is driven by a passion for addressing global human rights challenges and developing a comprehensive understanding of how we can learn from genocides of the past.
Hrant Dink was an Armenian Turkish journalist known for advocating for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey, who was assassinated in 2007. The Hrant Dink Memorial Human Rights Scholars Award is named in his honor and is intended to promote research on human rights and the consequences of inhumanity that derives from deep ethnic, national, racial, gender, and religious divides. Every year, the Hrant Dink Scholarship gives a student the opportunity to work with the Director of HRP, Carrie Booth Walling, to conduct research on urgent and emergent human rights emergencies, including the commission of mass atrocity crimes.
Mumtaaz looks forward to having the opportunity to work with Carrie under this scholarship. She says, “I am really grateful for this opportunity, the opportunity to learn the unknown. Every time I talk to Carrie I learn so many things. This is an opportunity to grow and learn so many things by tackling really difficult topics. Getting to hear people talk about mass atrocities, genocide, and human rights violations has been really impactful.”
Mumtaaz applied for the scholarship to help define how the world talks about human rights atrocities. “Today people use a lot of big words like genocide, war crimes, and mass atrocities in the world, so I really wanted to explore what that is and what human rights means,” she says. “I wanted mentorship to help me learn what human rights is and be able to apply that to things that are happening in the world right now.” The Hrant Dink Scholarship allows students the freedom to explore a topic of their interest while remaining within the scope of mass atrocity. “That is one thing I really love about this scholarship,” Mumtaaz says. “I am not bound to one project. I have the ability to explore my different interests in human rights.”
Mumtaaz intends to pursue a career in human rights law, and first became interested in human rights because of the books she read as a child. She was exposed to and read many books that talked about genocides and human rights atrocities: “I always wanted to be a lawyer but what got me into human rights was reading those books as a kid.” In pursuit of learning more about human rights, Mumtaaz is eager to learn as much as she can and wants to take advantage of all the opportunities around her.
In terms of current human rights issues, Mumtaaz is particularly interested in the atrocities being committed in Gaza, Sudan, and Myanmar. However, she also knows that many more situations worldwide need attention. “I am very aware of these three situations and try to educate myself on them,” she says. “But there are a lot of human rights violations that are not getting the attention or platform that they should be.” In addition to these current issues, Mumtaaz has always had a large interest in past genocides and women’s rights, especially the rights of women in low-income countries. She says, “I am not somebody who stays in one place or has one interest. I am interested in a wide variety of human rights issues.”
Mumtaaz’s lifelong passion for raising awareness for global human rights atrocities and studying past genocides continues to fuel her ambition in human rights work. We are thrilled to welcome Mumtaaz as this year’s Hrant Dink Scholar and are excited to see where her passion for human rights leads her.