College Makes Human Rights a Major Issue
Texas' SMU is latest of 5 universities to offer human rights focus
January 17, 2012
Southern Methodist University Professor Rick Halperin, who pushed for a human rights degree program, teaches a class.
For years, Southern Methodist University Professor Rick Halperin pushed for a human rights degree program. The former chairman of Amnesty International USA taught his first human rights on campus 21 years ago, before many of his current students were even born.
Finally, five years ago, SMU established a human rights minor for undergraduates. At the time, only 11 other schools offered such a program, according to Halperin.
“We just don’t talk about human rights in general in this country," he says. "We don’t talk about these things. I blame it in part on culture. It’s a clear failure from one end of this country to the other.”
Halperin set out to change that culture. Students began signing up for the minor and his required course, "America’s Dilemma: The Struggle for Human Rights."
Now, he says, “We have become the fastest growing program within SMU.”
That success fueled SMU’s approval of the human rights undergraduate major.
SMU joins Bard College and Columbia University in New York, Trinity College in Connecticut, and the University of Dayton in Ohio, as the nation’s only schools to offer the major.
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