Page 2 - Human Rights Program 2025 Annual Report

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DIRECTOR’S LETTER
Dear Friends of the Human Rights Program,
The 2024-2025 academic year was a challenging one for
human rights, both at home and abroad. In this moment
of backlash, the work that we do is as important as ever.
With your support, the Human Rights Program (HRP)
advances human rights scholarship, trains the next
generation of human rights scholars and practitioners,
strengthens partnerships across our human rights
community, and convenes programming on pressing
rights and justice concerns. In this annual report, we
celebrate some of the victories of 2024-2025.
HRP was awarded a Liberal Arts Engagement Hub grant and residency. With our partner, Children
of Incarcerated Caregivers, we convened a campus-community research team that explored
promising policies to elevate children’s rights in Minnesota’s criminal legal system.
We organized our first annual Human Rights Day Symposium highlighting student and faculty
human rights research, and we published a dozen oral histories of Minnesota human rights
leaders through the Minnesota Oral History Project.
Faced with increasing government interference in higher education and attacks on academic
freedom, we strengthened partnerships across campus, within the College of Liberal Arts, and with
other human rights programs across the country. We let international human rights standards
center our response to the most challenging of human rights concerns that are dividing
our communities.
Human Writes
Our students launched the Human Writes Blog which platforms student voices on the human
rights issues that matter most to them. Throughout this report, we celebrate the accomplishment
of our students who are already making a difference on campus and in our communities.
Here at the HRP, we plant, nurture, and grow the idea of human rights and the skills needed to
advance them. We can’t do this work without you. Your partnership - your ideas, talents, and
financial support - ensure our strength and expand our reach. Thank you for being part of our
vibrant local and global community of people taking ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) action
to advance human rights.
Sincerely,
Carrie Booth Walling
Director, Human Rights Program