 Aloha, I'm Joshua Cooper and welcome to Cooper Union, what's happening with human rights around our world on Think Tech Live, broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii, in Moana, New York. Today we're looking at education for full development and to promote peace. Article 26, the right to education for all. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the power of ideas to initiate change in the world and the UDHR outlines the opportunities for a new direction rooted in inherent dignity and inalienable rights for dynamic sustainable development and social democracy. Article 26 is the core of economic social and cultural rights in the UDHR. And I'm so honored to be joined by three legends of learning who are involved with human rights education around the world. And I'd love to begin by asking, why is this issue so important to you in international law, and what inspired you Nancy to first get involved with the human right to education? Well, once upon a time, a long time ago, I was a classroom teacher. I was an English teacher in a high school in California. Loved it. And in my private life, I was an activist with Amnesty International. And really the two, it was kind of a professional schizophrenia. The two did not meld at all. And in about 19, I think about 1984, I was asked to go to a meeting. Amnesty International USA was thinking of starting an educational program. And they invited, I think, 10 or 12 educators, couple of professors and elementary school teachers, a bunch of people who were Amnesty activists in the field of education in their professions to sort of consult how would Amnesty best have an education program in the United States? And this is true. I went to the bathroom and I came back and I was the National Education Director for Amnesty International. And it was perfect timing for me. I had just sent all my kids off to college. I didn't have to serve mothers dinners every night. And it was exciting because it hadn't been done before. There was no precedence. And I had been doing activism with Amnesty, so I knew something about human rights. And my other skill set was I was a teacher. I was been a teacher for 20 years. And suddenly those two things fit together in a way I'd never even imagined. In fact, the first time I was asked to go to that meeting, I said, human rights education, what is it? I never heard of it. But in that particular time, it was in the 80s, we had to figure out how to do it. Who were our allies? We didn't know if anybody else in the United States was doing it. And how did we find allies and make programs? And at the beginning, there were really no resources, no curriculum. So it was really pioneering in a very exciting way. And to build on that was just a great learning curve for me. And we were given a wonderful group to work with of other educators. So a lot of times when you build it from the ground up, you can't help but not only be excited about it, but also learn tremendously. So that's how I got started. And after that, the other timing that worked amazingly for me was that about the time I had finished my stint as the Amnesty USA Education Director, the Soviet Union began to break up. And a lot of countries were pulling away from the kinds of socialist Marxist curriculum that had and wanting to insert something they thought, let's call it democracy and human rights. Only they didn't have any books or teachers or programs. And suddenly they needed consultants from different parts of the world to consult about that. And the rest is history. So that's how I got started. Mahalo, and thank you so much. And maybe Sandra, you can share with us how you started serving up these meals of meaning and showing how education can make a difference. Sure. So I grew up on Long Island in New York and my family often spoke to me about human rights issues, even as a child. And I came to learn that the education system was funded through property taxes. And I had friends in neighboring towns and I could see that the quality of education was different. And so I got it in my head as I started to grow up that I wanted to work on changing the education system, how it was funded so that everybody received an equitable education. This idea kind of changed in different ways as I grew. And I ended up going to college and then getting my master's in human rights. And I wasn't really thinking about working on the right to education, but I think the idea was always inside me because I ended up working with a group of women to found an organization called the Advocacy Lab where we brought human rights education to New York City public schools. And with that organization, we had started going in, we were actually started by volunteering with Human Rights Watch to go in and do one-time presentations. And there was such a demand from teachers and students to learn more to know what they could do to advocate for human rights that that one-time visit turned into a year-long program where we started by bringing human rights knowledge to the students and then they chose an issue that they cared about and did a human rights campaign on that issue. So I was really inspired by the high school students that were joining protests, doing art, school assemblies, going to meet with their Congress people to advocate for human rights. And I just felt so inspired by them and I really wanted to take this further. So after about 10 years, I then went on into academia where now I get to teach and do research and work with high school students, college students, and teachers. And right now I'm lucky to be at the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut which has one of the largest, I think, assemblage of human rights professors in the country, if not the world. And so we get to do a lot of different human rights initiatives to promote human rights education, to promote the right to education in Connecticut and globally. Thank you so much. And I think we can do some great partnering with Shamanat as well with that angle. Moving on to Christy, why do you think this issue is so important in international human rights law and what first inspired you to care about this issue and some first campaigns you were involved in? Well, I remember back in fourth grade, I think specifically when we were learning about slavery and I was definitely inspired by Harriet Tubman and this notion of both injustice and the courage that she had working on the Underground Railroad. And later in high school, I was from Golden Valley, a town here outside of Minneapolis in Minnesota, and our school merged with another and then another. And out of that time, we ended up facing some anti-Semitism that I think raised my awareness substantially around people being treated unjustly. And so we created a human rights task force in the school of community members and teachers and students. And so way back in 42 years ago, I guess I was the first inkling into this human rights sphere. And then I went on to college and was fortunate to travel and study abroad. And in that experience, I was able to really understand racism in our own country at a much deeper level through the racism that I witnessed in France at the time. And I was talking with a Dutch family friend who said, oh, why are you thinking of international business? Have you ever thought of international human rights? Which was the first late time I heard that. And he said, have you ever thought about working with Amnesty International? And so upon my return to college, I started an Amnesty International group in Lawrence University. And I think within a couple of years I fortunately connected up with Nancy Flowers. But in that time at college, I also was working in prisons and with individuals who were coming out of the correctional structures. And so that too has teaching parenting classes in prison for fathers and the mothers and children helped me try and think about how can we really apply human rights, learning in non-formal settings as well. And I was very fortunate to work for 27 years co-directing the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center and worked on a lot of different campaigns. And I met you, thank you. Very great. And I was just on an event this morning on human rights cities and local government and saw more people from Minneapolis sharing their story early this morning. So it is exciting to see how human rights education really has evolved. How it went in many ways from ad hoc human rights with Amnesty International, smaller sessions, human rights watch one time events and larger ones and to see where we are now. Nancy, can you share with us in a way how you have actualized this article and what actions you're currently involved in to promote and protect the human rights to education? As I mentioned earlier, there was this conjunction of events which included the dissipation of the Soviet Union. And there suddenly in Eastern Europe there were all these opportunities. And they led to, at that time this is now the late 80s, early 90s. There was lots of opportunities. Several other countries were developing new constitutions, Ethiopia, Thailand. And the school system wanted to, and both of those, for example, had new bills of rights, which included human rights. And their school systems wanted consultants to come and think about how to promote the human rights aspect of their new constitutions. What I'm really saying is that one thing led to another. Another example is when, after the Oslo Accords, Palestinians got control of their own schools, they were very eager to insert human rights education. So for many years, I was doing that work that I loved, but I was doing it in somebody else's country. So about 15 years ago, I thought, I was getting older, I didn't want to travel so much. And I wanted to work in my country. And working with others, such as Christie and Felicia Tibbets who is right, I think in South Africa today doing more human rights education, we thought maybe we now have a critical mass. We knew there were people here and there across the country doing human rights education, but they weren't connected. And that was the beginning of Human Rights Educators USA, a network to bring both educators of all kinds, not just teachers in schools, not just professors, but also people working in NGOs, eager to teach people about their human rights. So the last 10 years, my work has been to try to work on my country, in my country, and with my countrymen. Thank you so much, Nancy Sandra. Can you share how you actualize the article in different ways that you're involved with? It actually was exciting to hear about the work you've been doing in New York and now in Dayton and around the nation. Yes, so now I'm working at the University of Connecticut and I've had this amazing opportunity. I'm the director of a program called Human Rights Close to Home. And it is one of, bless you, it is one of the impact programs at the Dodd Center for Human Rights. And so this is a program that it's a multi-year human rights education program for K through 12 teachers across all different subjects and high school students. And they learn together in a summer institute and from each other about human rights and civic action with the goal of strengthening democracy in this country. And so after the summer institute, the teachers integrate human rights into their curriculum, whether that's math curriculum, kindergarten curriculum, science curriculum, choir, you name it. And then the students plan a civic action project that they do in their local communities. And so we support them in the summer through the summer institute. And then throughout the year, we support them in actually implementing what they learn. And I have to say this program wouldn't be possible without Senator Dodd and funding from Sherry Redstone and the Redstone Family Foundation. We have one of the most robust human rights education programs in the country right now and an amazing team working at the University of Connecticut to make this happen. And I'm hoping that programs like this can be replicated in other places. And I know that there are some programs that are going on in other places around the country. So I think human rights education is really growing in ways that I'm so happy to see. And I just wanna talk about one other program that I'm not part of, but I did research with a couple members of this organization. It's called Hearing Youth Voices and they work to end systemic racism and education in New London, Connecticut. And it's run by the young people themselves. And so I worked with two young people, Taylor and Santiago and Zariah Ramos who were members of Hearing Youth Voices and they have done amazing things. They were part of initiative to get African-American and Latino studies into the curriculum. It has to be offered in every high school as an elective in Connecticut. And so they've done some really great work. And so we did research together to learn how being part of a movement like this really affects the young people who are doing the work. And so I get really inspired by them and the work that they're doing, the change that they're creating. Thank you so much. And really you point out something we know here in Hawaii with one of our Proverbs of Maka Hanukah Ike that is in the action, that is where the knowledge is. And that's what's so exciting about human rights education because you ask students to leave the classroom to get involved in the community, but then also realize how much they have in common with the global civil society. Christy, can you share with us a bit about how you actualize the article and what actions you're involved with to promote and protect the right to education? Well, I'll reflect back about another 30 years ago when we launched a mock trial of Christopher Columbus as part of our human rights education initiatives. And it was held at the state capitol. And so we were really looking at how do we reflect on what we're teaching in the classroom and how are we really trying to end a lot of notions of whether it's white supremacy or the Eurocentric models of teaching. And so through that process, we ended up, I guess, expanding a program called the Partners in Human Rights Education which modeled similarly to Sandra's where we had community leaders and lawyers working with teachers in the classroom. So we really encouraged that team approach so that it wanted supports educators so that you can then have community leaders really engaging with young people and then young people are able to bring it back into communities. So after running that program for a number of years, we were approached by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights to create what I think is the only statewide K-12 human rights curricula that was developed with educators in the field. And that's called This Is My Home, Minnesota Human Rights Education Experience. But in that, it really helped to raise a lot of awareness as well as trying to really think about what does this look like as we roll it out. We had a 50th anniversary. Now we're coming up on the 75th anniversary of the UDHR. So many of us were involved in a program called Human Rights USA, Bringing Human Rights Home. And really trying to both think about how does this apply in civil society and human rights and what we do. And out of that, a number of networks were formed including the Human Rights Educators USA Network. And what we're trying to do just a few examples is we have a new youth award that Nancy is actually the coordinator of, a youth award for human rights that the nominations are due October 1st. And we hope to really uplift and a lot of our young people are doing amazing work. We have fellowships, so we're really trying to figure out how we can mentor others, young emerging leaders in this work. As well as then, how do we create stories like what you're doing here, Josh? I think it's really important that we really gather the wisdom from leaders and that we figure out how we can ripple it, whether it's through our, we have a new Human Rights Education Now podcast that we're really excited to roll out. So check it out. Mahalo, and we look at Article 26. It really does focus on education, be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. And education also promotes understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups and shall further the activities of the UN for that maintenance of peace. Nancy, can you share a bit in a way of, what is the vision for the future of this very important right? It is such an important, of course, when you talk about the importance of any one right, you do not ever want to suppose that one is more important than the other. We cannot do without them all. But this is the right to an education and not just to be learning and reading, writing and essentials. But for example, in the realm of women's human rights, we know where women are educated, children are more healthy, children are more educated, where women are not the rivers. I mean, the possibility of actually doing those things that it promises in Article 26, especially Part Two, the full development of the human personality. That is such an expiring idea. And speaking now, as a former teacher, that each student should have, well, should have the right to be a student. And also, the right to not just become literate, but the right to fully, if that student is able and wants to, to realize the full education he or she needs. For example, in our country, going to college is a very, very expensive proposition. It's not available to everyone. That Article 26 suggests it should be that everyone should be able to be educated to the degree that they are capable or desire. When you think of the kind of college debt that many students, many people cannot marry until they're almost 40 because they've got college debt. It's the kind of issue that Article 26 is just one corner of it, but it is especially, and again, I want to focus on our country, the United States. That's one of the major things. Also, one other thing is that the way our educational system is structured, every, not just state, we don't have a ministry of education. Every state is in charge of its own education and every school district has regional autonomy. And therefore, certain topics are forbidden as we know in certain states, not to pick on any particular state, but in several southern states, if you teach scientific evolution for three hours, you must teach creationism the same number of hours. It's required by the state law. So you cannot take states rights away from them, but there is an inequity in what people are allowed to learn or to have access to information. Again, another right of the child is the right to information, which is not always very much, but it's very much part of Article 26, but not always realized. So lots of work to be done. Absolutely, and it reminds me of the work we've been doing under the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the CERD Convention. That's so important. And Article 7 looks at education as well. Sandra, can you share with us a bit of your vision for the future of the right? Yes, and I think it relates to what both you and Nancy have been talking about. I think about the right to education being advanced for all in the future and the right to equitable education, but not just any equitable education. We know that there are some major human rights violators that were very well educated, so or highly educated, but I think that's where human rights education comes in because you think about the type of education that can instill treating people with respect and dignity and with kindness and caring for each other. And so I've done some research on human rights education in different places around the world, and I was really hoping to find a robust human rights education program that I could study and learn about how it affects the people who are participating in these programs. And there really is a long way to go. Even though we've made some great advances, human rights education is really lacking in a lot of places. So my hope is that human rights education can really expand so that everyone can have access to it and that we are sharing the type of education that really can ensure that everyone's treated with dignity and respect and with kindness. I appreciate both of your comments and really showing the intersectionality of all these 30 UDHR articles. And also as we look at it, we have the climate crisis looking at evolution of these rights, which we see through the general comments drafted by these committees and also the jurisprudence by these committees as actually developed as well as the special operators have been I'd also fascinating. Christy, can you share with me your vision for the future of the right? Well, I think the right is both the right to education and the right to human rights education. And I would say human rights learning. So I think that what we need to do is oftentimes when we say human rights education we think of very much a formal education structure. And I think it is formal but we have to bring in the relational components to the classroom, to the learning process. And so when with the World Program for Human Rights Education they really talked about human rights education being about for and through. And so that through is really the dynamic relationship of how our students working with their families with the teachers and what are we doing in terms of kind of moving this right forward toward the future. And I think that learning angle kind of opens up the fact that we really need to be listening to different ways of knowing and respecting different ways of knowing whether it's the indigenous leaders that I feel very fortunate to have learned a great deal from who are with the International Indian Treaty Council or other movements. And I think those leaders are the ones who can help to really understand the interconnections already as you've mentioned of environment and human rights sovereignty, self-determination. So I think we have a lot to learn together but I think hopefully through case studies we can learn and really help others think creatively about how we can move this right forward. Very true and indigenous have definitely inspired me in the decades of work as well to see the world through fresh eyes. And we can see now as we're decolonizing education also decarbonizing the larger environment how we have to work with everything and pull that together. And the UDHR article 26 demands everyone has the right to education noting it should be free and that technical professional education also generally available in higher education as Nancy was sharing equally accessible. Inner closing moments, maybe Nancy you can begin. What countries or what models have you seen that are the most inspiring and impactful at the international that we can maybe look at to do here better? Well, speaking and connecting to article 26 it's not just about schools and students. One of the things that I had to learn was how important but high dynamic it is for adult educators. And truly you realize the free area and principle of the facilitator as equal learner. You adults bring so much experience and wisdom to what they're learning. They want to learn about human rights. They want to apply it to their lives. And in that way we're all enriched by making it make sense to them. I've often cited this story but I was in San Francisco not long ago doing a program on human rights for women. And we were training women NGOs in the San Francisco area of all kinds. And a woman came up to me afterwards and said, damn it I've been running this women's shelter for 18 years and nobody ever told me that it was a human right not to be beaten and humiliated. And the next Christmas at that time when NGOs are trying to raise money she sent me her brochure and she said you can't beat women. They have a human right. People can see how it applies to their work whatever their work is whatever their social justice or community service or whatever adults are really important to me. Way of looking forward. I don't know if that answered your question but. Absolutely. Everyone is a human rights defender. Sandra, your final thoughts. I think that we should watch and see how human rights education is growing around the world and particularly community engaged human rights education. And I did some research in South Africa and have been kind of following their progression of human rights education. There is some in the classrooms but not as much as I thought there would be but they have recently started a new initiative to bring more human rights education to the class. So I am interested to see where that goes. And I hope that community engaged human rights education does continue to grow where like you talked about I can't remember exactly what you said but knowledge through action, right? I think that's really important and the partnership of community members and researchers and teachers and really breaking down hierarchies of learning. I couldn't agree more. Definitely if we look at that beautiful perspective of horizontal and holistic that's the way that we can move forward. Christy final thoughts. Well, I think that there are, I know there is a global association for human rights education, a number of them actually that are emerging and really expanding. And so I'm excited to actually head over to the University of Iceland right now to work with some professors to launch their very first human rights education course with educators. And I would also say they have the children's rights schools initiatives going on. So UNICEF USA has been doing some really exciting work within and through schools too. So I'm really looking forward to kind of the future. Absolutely, thank you all and appreciate everything that all of you have done for human rights education so far. Also be heading through the University of New South Wales diplomacy training program in East Timor to commemorate their anniversary of independence and exercising their right of self determination. But it has been an honor to work with all of you around the world and look forward to continue doing that until the 100th UDHR anniversary. Mahalo Nui. Mahalo. Mahalo.