The Human Rights Project helps the Bard community examine the theory and practice of human rights through teaching, research, and public programs.
The Human Rights Project (HRP) is an exploratory research and action initiative at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Through teaching, public programs, research, and engagement with communities in the region and globally, the HRP aims at once to foster critical discussions of human rights theory and practice, and to engage with practitioners on the leading edges of human rights research. Founded in 1999, the HRP developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States in 2003. The Project inquires into the philosophical foundations and political mechanisms of human rights, maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and explores the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse.
The Human Rights Project (HRP) is an exploratory research and action initiative at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. Through teaching, public programs, research, and engagement with communities in the region and globally, the HRP aims at once to foster critical discussions of human rights theory and practice, and to engage with practitioners on the leading edges of human rights research. Founded in 1999, the HRP developed the first interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States in 2003. The Project inquires into the philosophical foundations and political mechanisms of human rights, maintains a special interest in freedom of expression and the public sphere, and explores the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse.
Our Projects
Human Rights Radio
Human Rights Radio launched in Spring of 2014 as an auditory platform exploring contemporary topics and issues in human rights. Among other things, we’re interested in exploring the politics of voice and how we think of questions of agency, authenticity, and affect in relation to “public” voices. Human Rights Radio is also interested in the story of (terrestrial) radio transmission and its role in political struggles in many parts of the world, and how international and national regulatory frameworks play a role in governing these transmissions.
Advocacy Video: Clemency
Advocacy Video: Clemency is a course jointly taught by professors Thomas Keenan & Brent Green in which students work collaboratively with law students and faculty, to do hands-on human rights research and advocacy, and to create work that has real-life impact. The class will alternate between video production and the study of clemency and pardons, emotion and human rights, first-person narrative, and persuasion by visual means.
The Migration Track in the Human Rights Program
The courses within the Migration Track in the Human Rights Program are designed to provide a conceptual framework for thinking about migration not as an isolated (nor recent) phenomenon, but one that is deeply connected to historical, political, economic, legal, and environmental contexts and conditions that are best approached through interdisciplinary study.