The Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs and School of Integrative Studies’ Global Studies program are proud to present GLST 491: Human Rights, Conflict, and Community Changemaking. GLST 491 is open to all UNL students, and will challenge students to understand the roots of today’s most difficult human rights issues, give them the critical thinking skills to conceptualize solutions, and to equip them with concrete professional skills to begin to implement these solutions. The class community will cultivate the awareness necessary to identify the change that needs to happen in the word and the empowerment necessary to be that change.
The course will focus equally on human rights challenges and changemakers. It will focus on three key global challenges to physical integrity rights, civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. GLST 491 will hone in on three key challenges to physical integrity rights around the globe: lack of access to healthcare, human trafficking, and femicide. Then, the course will spotlight three rising global challenges to civil and political rights: censorship, government repression of civil society, and unfolding debates about civil and political rights in cyberspace. Finally, the course will delve deep into three challenges to economic and social rights: labor exploitation, environmental degradation, and human rights abuses faced by sexual minorities. In our explorations of each of these issues, students will get the tools to cultivate a professional skill that will make each student a more empowered human rights changemaker. These skills range from using quantitative data to social media communication to website design to public speaking to running effective meetings.
Throughout the course, students will not only explore the serious barriers to ensuring universal enjoyment of the right, but will learn from the inspiring examples of human rights leaders who have been effectively making positive change on these issues. Following in the footsteps of these changemakers, students will better equip themselves to be human rights changemakers by cultivating practical, real-world skills that can be applied to the human rights issue that lights their fire. Every student will emerge from the course with a portfolio to showcase the skills they’ve cultivated: hard, professionally-relevant proof of the human rights change that they’re equipped to make in Nebraska and beyond.
To learn more about the course, and other opportunities within the Global Studies Program and the Forsythe Family Program on Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, students, advisors, and other interested staff are welcome to contact Dr. Julia Reilly, Assistant Professor of Practice in Global Studies and Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, at jreilly3@unl.edu.
More details at: https://sgis.unl.edu/life-nebraska