HRSJ 5010 Foundations of HRSJ

Dr. Rob Hanlon, Dr. Monica Sanchez

Foundations of Human Rights and Social Justice was a great starting point for the program. The whole focus was really about getting us comfortable with the big ideas and theories people use to talk about human rights. We spent a lot of time reading different articles and looking closely at how each author built their argument, which helped us pick up the language, tools, and confidence we needed to join the conversations ourselves.

Because it was an intro course, we covered a wide range of approaches -universalism vs. relativism, EDI, intersectionality, distributive justice, critical race theory, disability theory, feminist analysis, and the influence of social and political structures. It felt like a intensive introduction to the major lenses that are used to understand rights and justice.

The themes were just as broad. We touched on human rights law, activism and social movements, human rights procedures, torture and due process issues, standards and remedies, the duty to accommodate, access to justice, disability rights, Indigenous rights, decolonization and reconciliation, refugee and immigrant rights, intersecting forms of discrimination, international human rights instruments, governance, transnational politics, conflict resolution, humanitarian intervention, and peace education.

By the end, I felt like I had a solid foundation: the vocabulary, the concepts, and the ability to think critically about human rights issues from multiple angles. It really did what an introductory course should do: opened the door and gave us the tools to walk through it.