Offered by the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute (DHRC@FHI), the Human Rights Certificate offers Duke University undergraduate students an in-depth and rigorous interdisciplinary study of human rights history, theory and practice, cultivating life-long learners and engaged citizens who have a deep and nuanced understanding of human rights. Human rights cannot be isolated into one or even a few disciplines and its study must draw on the concepts and lived experience of scholars, practitioners, journalists and communities struggling to defend their rights. Students pursuing the certificate study human rights not as good or evil but as a constellation of approaches, histories, practices and critiques.
The certificate promotes an intellectual approach that asks critical questions and teaches students how to read books, images, and media with a critical eye; how to write or communicate clearly and concisely; how to reach a non-academic audience; and how to do their own research and thus reach their own conclusions through reasoned argument. Through their studies, students engage not only with histories and ideas, but also the people who do human rights work or who see themselves as in need of human rights protection.