Pursuing
SOCIAL JUSTICE Human rights program prepares students to empower communities By Kim Mousseau
When people think about human rights, they might focus on international organizations and institutions like Amnesty International or the United Nations, high-profile legal cases and celebrity spokespeople. But in the College of Community and Public Affairs’ Master of Science in Human Rights program, students are trained to build impactful social justice movements that begin with the communities where they live.
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If all it took to guarantee human rights was good intentions by elites, then we would live in a very different world,” says Suzy Lee, assistant professor and program director. “For human rights to be safeguarded and secure, we need to organize communities and embolden them with knowledge and tools to demand those rights for themselves.” Launched in fall 2019, the Master of Science (MS) in Human Rights program uses an
interdisciplinary approach to prepare students to contend with real-world issues while empowering the communities they serve. The program has 19 graduates from two cohorts. Some came directly from undergraduate programs like CCPA’s Bachelor of Science in Human Development and other Binghamton University majors, including anthropology, political science, sociology and English. As the program becomes established, however, it is seeing an increase in applicants from other universities, both in and out of state and internationally. “We have a fairly diverse group of applicants,” Lee says, “with some having spent significant binghamton.edu/CCPA I S P R I N G 2 0 2 3
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