Five human rights leaders shared their experiences with University students and professors at the Texas Union’s Santa Rita Room on Sunday.
The panel, “Human Rights Work at UT – Where Should We Go From Here?,” was the final event in a three-day conference on academics and advocacy hosted by UT’s Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.
James Smith, chief executive of the anti-genocide organization Aegis Trust, said universities’ ability to contribute to projects that won’t have immediate results offers a significant advantage over the typical five-year view most non-governmental organizations take when deciding what to support.
Aegis Trust works with the UT library system, he said, on a program that protects and digitally preserves archives and other primary sources in danger of being lost that document genocide.
“Without the participation of UT, it would have probably gone nowhere,” Smith said.
Much of the struggle in acquiring funding stemmed from difficulty in measuring results, a need that panelists said could be addressed with assessments from universities.
“Why should you give me a million dollars because I think I’m going to do this report that’s going to change the world?” said Susannah Sirkin, deputy director for international policy and advocacy at Physicians for Human Rights.
For students looking to get involved in human rights advocacy, panelists advised passion, persistence and communication skills.
Sirkin said she was pleased with the number of faculty from the English department participating in the conference. Writing skills are a major factor for rights organizations looking at candidates, she said.
“If you can’t write, you’re not working here,” she said.
After the discussion, panelist Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Program, stressed the need to balance candidates’ human rights education with the need for diversity.
“We don’t want only to create a new generation of human rights advocates coming from privileged backgrounds,” Dakwar said.
He suggested reaching out to universities and community centers that lack resources and providing courses on human rights and career services that put students in contact with rights groups.
Dakwar said the diversity of departments on display at the conference was encouraging.
“It is a model that other universities can look to,” he said.
As the panel drew to a close, Ariel Dulitzky, director of the Human Rights Clinic at the UT School of Law and the panel’s moderator, said he was optimistic about the future of human rights at UT.
“In five years, you will see a much stronger and bigger presence here at the University of Texas,” he said.
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