HRTSBA - Human Rights Practice
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Program Type
Bachelor of Arts
College
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
Career
Undergraduate
Program Availability
This program will no longer accept new applicants beginning Summer 2026.
Program Description
A focused program of study in an important and growing field that is critical for addressing numerous socio-political issues. The rigorous, critical, and place-based curriculum offers students extensive opportunities for community engagement including innovative new courses that mentor students in best practices for working with marginalized community members.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify many of the multiple and complex causes of human rights abuses including social, political, cultural, and environmental, causes.
- Examine in some depth several recent major cases and controversies related to human rights in the U.S. and globally.
- Apply a critical theoretical perspective to the development and function of local, national, and transnational social movements and human rights organizations.
- Understand and evaluate best practices that activists use to advance human rights through social movements, litigation, and direct action.
- Adopt and apply a general set of norms and an ethos that is essential to successful human rights practice, especially when working with marginalized groups.
- Recognize significant psychological issues, such as trauma and burnout, that are often present in human rights fieldwork, and possess some strategies for properly addressing them.
- Develop and utilize selected practical skills for advancing human rights.
- Demonstrate the ability to locate, evaluate, and synthesize primary and secondary sources in human rights.
- Examine in some depth several recent major cases and controversies related to human rights in the U.S. and globally.
- Apply a critical theoretical perspective to the development and function of local, national, and transnational social movements and human rights organizations.
- Understand and evaluate best practices that activists use to advance human rights through social movements, litigation, and direct action.
- Adopt and apply a general set of norms and an ethos that is essential to successful human rights practice, especially when working with marginalized groups.
- Recognize significant psychological issues, such as trauma and burnout, that are often present in human rights fieldwork, and possess some strategies for properly addressing them.
- Develop and utilize selected practical skills for advancing human rights.
- Demonstrate the ability to locate, evaluate, and synthesize primary and secondary sources in human rights.