Wendy S. Hesford

The Human Rights in Transit summer travel program, now in its second year, took five undergraduate students to New York City for five days to study human rights. Students attended the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, explored the archives at Columbia University’s Center for Human Rights Documentation & Research, browsed the Barnard College Zine Library and took in the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Students also toured sites of historic signicance such as the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the African Burial Ground National Monument, the Stonewall National Monument and the New York City AIDS Memorial. Among the films screened at the Human Rights Watch Festival were “The Cleaners,” a documentary about digital sanitizers and censorship; “Facing the Dragon,” a documentary about Afghan women’s activism; “What will People Say,” a feature lm about a Pakistani girl struggling to conform to the expectations of her family; and “Anote’s Ark,” a documentary about sea level rise and habitat destruction faced by the Island nation of Kiribati. These films enabled students to grapple with issues like gender violence, climate change, immigration and civil rights. At the Whitney Museum of American Art, students attended the exhibition, “An Incomplete History of Protest,” which highlighted how artists from the 1940s to the present have confronted political and social issues of their times. They also participated in an open forum, “Ethics of Looking.” Undergraduate Ellen McDaniel described this experience as profound and eye-opening, helping her realize “just how much representation, symbolization and rhetoric effect the way the world views human rights issues.” This program was sponsored by Human Rights in Transit Pilot Project and the International Studies Program. It was led by Professor Wendy S. Hesford and PhD student Jessie Male. The majors of participating students ranged from environmental policy and decision making to international relations and diplomacy; several were human rights minors.