 "Photo: Lauren Gerson/The Daily Texan")
UT’s Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice’s fifth annual human rights conference began Thursday, providing an opportunity for students and the community to initiate a dialogue.
The Rapoport Center, devoted to discussion of policy analysis of human rights, sponsored the conference. To address issues important to the community, the center asked all UT campuses to submit their ideas.
“The conference is derived from the proposals we received,” said Karen Engle, the director of the center. “There is a mix of advocacy projects, academic papers, posters on books and a large emphasis on projects that people at UT are doing with the community, whether it be on the border or international communities.”
Thursday’s events covered a variety of human rights topics and how they relate to contemporary issues. The conference continues through Saturday in the Texas Union.
David Kennedy, vice president for international affairs at Brown University, spoke about the role of universities when it comes to human rights dialogue.
“I think at the beginning, the role of universities was getting [human rights discussion] going,” he said. “It was a very productive moment of exploration. Now, it’s a profession and institutional movement that has become quite powerful.”
Ken Shine, the UT System executive vice chancellor for health affairs, talked about the concept of health and how it is covered in the human rights discussion.
“We struggle all the time with the question of whether health is a human right,” he said. “It is a right, unlike free speech, that is closely connected with economic reality.”
UT law student Bridgett Mayeux works as a human rights scholar with the Rapoport Center. She said that when she worked abroad last summer in Kathmandu, Nepal, she compiled cases relating to the 10-year civil war and worked with torture survivors and families of missing individuals.
Mayeux said the experience made her appreciate work done in the global community.
“That experience has most impacted my future career goals as a human rights lawyer,” she said. “I took away the importance of activists reaching outside academics and research projects and doing valuable field work.”
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