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Cultural Anthropology 235S: Human Rights Activism

In Robin Kirk's Human Rights Activism course, students read classic human rights texts and examine the histories and contexts of these documents as well how early proponents of human rights used them, successfully and unsuccessfully.

By studying a different human rights issue every week, the students look at examples from a variety of periods, disciplines and cultures:

  • Europe’s attitude toward Latin America’s indigenous populations

  • the British-based campaign to end slavery

  • the impact on human rights of the Holocaust

  • the death penalty

  • the American civil rights movement

  • the Cold War

  • women’s rights

  • refugees and the internally displaced

  • weapons, technology, and war

  • truth commissions

  • other humanitarian interventions

These examples help students to understand how activists made practical use of the law, politics, the media, events and public opinion.

 

Why is this a service-learning course?

Because as professor Kirk says, students "take what they've read about and see how it works in the real world."

  • Each student selects a service placement and commits to serve 20 hours at this organization over the course of the semester.

  • The menu of service placements have been carefully arranged by Dr. Kirk in collaboration with several long-time community partners engaged in human rights-related work.

  • Students submit a weekly reflection on how the service experience relates to the course content and discuss the ethical and civic issues that arise through their service.

 

The Facts

In Fall 2009, 16 students completed approximately 320 hours of service with the following community partners:

  • Southern Coalition for Social Justice: Volunteers for Checkpoint Watch monitor and Twitter police and state trooper DWI stops, to ensure that racial profiling is not taking place.

  • North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium: NCCM is a non-partisan coalition North Carolinians committed to reforming the death penalty. Students help organize a "Live from Death Row" event at Duke, update records on campaign donations for NC senators and legislators, and provide content for the web site.

  • North Carolina Stop Torture Now: This all-volunteer group is the largest anti-torture coalition in the United States. Students help organize events, including an event on Duke’s campus.

  • EK Powe Elementary School: Students volunteer with the food backpack program, which provides staples to needy families with children enrolled at Powe, and organize a food drive to augment supplies.

  • Duke Human Rights Center: Student research summer internships and year-long fellowships related to human rights, assembled a list of rights-related courses offered at Duke, and assisted The Pauli Murray Project, which applies human rights lesson to Durham’s history, with meetings and events.

For more information, or download the course syllabus.

Reflections

Service-learning is an essential part of any education plan in human rights.

The dilemmas that faced leaders as disparate as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, and anti-slave trade campaigners like Thomas Clarkson are very much with us today as we seek to guarantee rights for all people. Like human rights activists today, they faced questions on whether to go fast or slow, who had power and what alliances to build. 

After their placements, students return to the classroom with a new appreciation of the difficulties as well as the rewards of this work.

- Robin Kirk, Instructor

I took Dr. Kirk’s class in the fall of senior year. Because of its “history” designation, the course did teach us a lot about past human rights events like the Cambodian genocide and the Civil Rights movement, as well as some current issues, like torture and the DRC.

But there was also a service-learning component to the class, so two classmates and I worked with a program called “Food for Families” at a local elementary school, E.K. Powe. Taylor, Risa and I packed weekly backpacks full of healthy snacks and meals to send home with students who may not eat enough without the daily school meals provided.

We helped organize a food drive that included Duke students, religious organizations, and surrounding neighborhoods; it brought in a pantry’s worth of food, and was a huge success.

The ability to not just talk about some really difficult issues, like poverty, racism, and lack of agency, but to actually confront and try to do something about them, made this course a powerful experience.

- Sarah Frush, student

This fall, Robin Kirk gave us the gift of working with Sarah Frush, Risa Isard, and Taylor Damiani, members of Robin's Human Rights class.

Sarah, Risa, and Taylor brought enthusiasm and dedication to our program. Not only did they take complete responsibility for selecting the food, packing the backpacks, and delivering the backpacks to the kids every other week in the semester, but they also masterminded a huge food drive. Through this drive they collected enough food for us to pack 15 backpacks for about a month! We were able to increase the number of students who received backpacks because of this food drive.

- Helen Compton, Coordiantor, E.K. Powe Food-4-Families project

In the News

A November 2009 Chronicle article describes the food drive organized by Dr. Kirk's students for E.K. Powe.

In it, Risa Isard says, “I have learned a lot about the Durham community. Before, I found myself saying things about Durham that I actually have no basis for saying. I went into the school with preconceived notions, but when I got there I realized that this is an elementary school just like [the one] I went to.”