Human Rights In Higher Education

1. The human right to higher education -- 2. Theoretical approaches to higher education -- 3. Evaluating higher education policy and legislation -- 4. Practical approaches to higher education -- Appendix A. Signs and measures of a successful higher education system -- Appendix B. Evaluation of state higher education policy: by country -- Appendix C. Summary country comparison.

This work seeks to determine if there is still a place for the human right to higher education in the current international context. It compares and contrasts two general theoretical models that are used to frame higher education policy: the market-based approach and the human rights-based approach. It contributes to an understanding of the likely effectiveness of each approach to higher education provision in terms of teaching and learning. This understanding should enable the development of more improved, sophisticated, and ultimately successful higher education policies.

This book adds impetus to the nexus between human rights, human rights education and material reality. The dissonance between these aspects is of growing concern for most human rights educators in various social contexts. The first part of the book opens up new discourses and presents new ontologies and epistemologies from scholars in human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to critique and/or justify the understandings of human rights’ complex applications. Today’s rapidly changing social contexts and new languages attempting to understand ongoing dehumanization and violations, put enormous pressure on higher education, educators, individuals working in social sciences, policy makers and scholars engaged in curricula making.The second part demonstrates how global interactions between citizens from different countries with diverse understandings of human rights (from developed and developing democracies) question the link between human rights and it’s in(ex)clusive Western philosophies. Continuing inhumane actions around the globe reflect the failure of human rights law and human rights education in schools, higher education and society at large. The book shows that human rights education is no longer a blueprint for understanding human rights and its universal or contextual values presented for multicomplexial societies. The final chapters argue for new ontologies and epistemologies of human rights, human rights education and human rights literacies to open-up difficult conversations and to give space to dissonant and disruptive discourses. The many opportunities for human rights education and literacies lies in these conversations.

This volume explores the application of human rights to higher education through a critical lens. Combining theoretical and applied perspectives, it asks what a human rights framework grounded in liberation and justice can offer to ways of working and teaching practices in higher education. Human rights, in this edited compilation, call for continuous critical engagements around the higher education transformation project. The book recognizes human rights simultaneously as law, values, and emancipatory vision. It showcases global north and global south perspectives and encourages a dialogue between the human rights approach and other approaches to higher education transformation, such as decolonialization, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion, and intersectionality. Individual chapters featuring a range of case studies written from global south and north perspectives critically examine higher education practices linked with human rights, ranging from curricular practices to student activism and community partnerships. The critical space of the university and its role in the transformation of society is therefore viewed in multi-dimensional ways. Underlining the value of applying human rights as a framework in understanding and designing higher education transformation, the book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of the sociology of education, human rights education, higher education, and social justice education

This book offers research-based models of exemplary practice for educators at all grade levels, from primary school to university, who want to integrate human rights education into their classrooms. It includes ten examples of projects that have been effectively implemented in classrooms: two from elementary school, two from middle school, three from high school, two from community college, and one from a university. Each model discusses the scope of the project, its rationale, students' response to the content and pedagogy, challenges or controversies that arose, and their resolution. Unique in integrating theory and practice and in addressing human rights issues with special relevance for communities of color in the US, this book provides indispensable guidance for those studying and teaching human rights.

Over the past five decades, both peace education and human rights education have emerged distinctly and separately as global fields of scholarship and practice. Promoted through multiple efforts (the United Nations, civil society, grassroots educators), both of these fields consider content, processes, and educational structures that seek to dismantle various forms of violence, as well as move towards cultures of peace, justice and human rights. Educating for Peace and Human Rights Education introduces students and educators to the challenges and possibilities of implementing peace and human rights education in diverse global sites. The book untangles the core concepts that define both fields, unpacking their histories and conceptual foundations, and presents models and key research findings to help consider their intersections, convergences, and divergences. Including an annotated bibliography, the book sets forth a comprehensive research agenda, allowing emerging and seasoned scholars the opportunity to situate their research in conversation with the global fields of peace and human rights education.

In tracing the origins of the modern human-rights movement, historians typically point to two periods: the 1940s, in which decade the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was ratified by the United Nations General Assembly; and the 1970s, during which numerous human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), most notably Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières, came into existence. It was also in the 1970s, Sarita Cargas observes, when the first classes in international human rights began to be taught in law schools and university political science departments in the United States. Cargas argues that the time has come for human rights to be acknowledged as an academic discipline. She notes that human rights has proven to be a relevant field to scholars and students in political science and international relations and law for over half a century. It has become of interest to anthropology, history, sociology, and religious studies, as well as a requirement even in social work and education programs. However, despite its interdisciplinary nature, Cargas demonstrates that human rights meets the criteria that define an academic discipline in that it possesses a canon of literature, a shared set of concerns, a community of scholars, and a methodology. In an analysis of human rights curricula in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Cargas identifies an informal consensus on the epistemological foundations of human rights, including familiarity with human rights law; knowledge of major actors including the United Nations, governments, NGOS, and multinational corporations; and, most crucially, awareness and advocacy of the rights and freedoms detailed in the articles of the UDHR. The second half of the book offers practical recommendations for creating a human rights major or designing courses at the university level in the United States.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of selected research concerning global and comparative trends in dominant discourses on human rights education. Using diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to historical-comparative research, the book examines major human rights education reforms and policy issues in a global culture with a focus on the ambivalent and problematic relationship between human rights education discourses, ideology and the state. Further, it discusses democracy, national identity, and social justice, which are among the most critical and significant factors defining and contextualising the processes surrounding nation-building, identity politics and human rights education globally, and also critiques current human rights education practices and policy reforms, illustrating the shifts in the relationship between the state and human rights education policy. Written by authors from diverse backgrounds and regions, the book examines current developments in research concerning human rights education, and citizenship education globally. As such it enables readers to gain a more holistic understanding of the nexus between nation-state, national identity and human rights education both locally and globally. It also provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly insights into international concerns in the field of human rights education in the context of global culture.