BC creates rights and justice center

They are the forgotten people, he said.

The 35 million refugees and displaced persons around the world are among the problems that Rev. David Hollenbach, S.J., is looking to analyze.

As director of Boston College's new Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Hollenbach is eager to wrestle with worldwide issues like these from an interdisciplinary approach.

"We are seeking to address the major social justice questions of our time that are most easily formulated through a discussion of human rights internationally," he said.

The center, which was founded in 2004, will officially open next week with an address by Mary Robinson, former United Nations high commissioner for human rights and former president of Ireland.

"You can see human rights as a cry against the injustice and suffering that is inflicted on weak and poor and victimized people," said Hollenbach. "The center wants to take those struggles and sufferings into account in a very serious academic and intellectual way of addressing these questions."

The interdisciplinary approach is evidenced by the assistant directors' range of backgrounds - Donald Hafner, a political science professor; Daniel Kanstroom, director of the Law School International Human Rights Program; and M. Brinton Lykes, a professor and associate dean in the Lynch School of Education.

The dialogue with Robinson titled "Human Rights and Justice for Refugees" will launch the center into one of its initial primary focuses. "She is the former top person in the world on human rights," said Hollenbach.

The center, which began as part of a strategic planning initiative in 1997, has a two-fold purpose, Hafner said. The directors want to have a center that is useful for practitioners and policy makers outside of BC. Within campus, they hope to provoke conversation among disciplines, and have more students and faculty thinking about human rights issues and becoming informed.

The two-fold purpose is facilitated in two branches that Hollenbach described. On one hand, there is a strong research focus that is currently devoted to three projects involving issues of refugees and displaced persons worldwide, immigrants in the United States, and exhumations of victims in Guatemala. The directors hope the research and subsequent publications will contribute to the larger debate about these questions, Hollenbach said.

On campus, the center is encouraging discussion in a graduate seminar. Hollenbach hopes for this class to develop into a certificate program that will allow students to get a certification of expertise in human rights work. The seminar reaches across disciplines by including graduate students from the law school, A&S, LSOE, and social work.

BC's role as a Jesuit university offers a unique connection in wrestling with issues of human rights and social justice, Hafner said, because of the ability and credibility the University has when speaking with other communities of faith.

"As we know, human rights and international justice involve fundamentally matters of ethics and questions of politics and economics," he said. "In that sense, BC comes to this kind of an enterprise with a lot of strengths in a way that might not be feasible at schools that don't have a religious affiliation."

"These questions seem as closely linked to a Jesuit university mission as you could find," said Hollenbach. "And I say that as a Jesuit."

The center's directors are looking to promote undergraduates through program presentations like the "African Oil and Poverty" lecture held Thursday night.

"The students I'm in regular contact with have a very deep interest in these issues of international justice," said Hollenbach. "These questions are burning ones and they need serious intellectual commitment. We're trying to bring real depth to the analysis of these questions."

"All of us would hope that our programs will be appealing to students on campus, not only participate in the programs but pepper us with ideas on things they think we should be addressing," said Hafner. "That way we can support each other."