History, Vision and Accomplishments
Human Rights Clinic Director Ariel Dulitzky (second from left) and members from the Observatorio de Discriminacion Racial of the Los Andes University in Bogota, participate in an October 2008 hearing on racial discrimination and access to justice for Afro-descendants in Colombia, before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C.
Bernard Rapoport meets with students from the nation's first Transnational Workers Rights Clinic in the spring of 2005.
The mission of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice is to build a multidisciplinary community engaged in the study and practice of human rights that promotes the economic and political enfranchisement of marginalized individuals and groups both locally and globally. The Center was created in the summer of 2004, thanks to a generous gift by the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation to the University of Texas School of Law. The University of Texas is one of the only public research and teaching entities in the southern and southwestern United States with a center dedicated to the advancement of human rights. It is among a minority of human rights centers in the country that is truly interdisciplinary. Lawyers and law students work side-by-side with scholars and practitioners across disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, government, public policyand the fine arts. The Center’s motto is “Partners for Change at the Intersection of Academics and Advocacy,” representing its mission and unique position as an academic center that not only works across disciplines, but also collaborates with the communities outside the academy to affect innovative, enduring change in the lives of marginalized individuals and groups.
The Rapoport Center has demonstrated a particularly strong commitment to researching and advocating for the collective rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants in Latin America. It collaborates closely with the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS) and the Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, both of which research indigenous peoples and the African Diaspora in Latin America. Moreover, a number of the Center’s affiliated faculty members from across campus specialize in issues related to indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants in Latin America. Many have worked with the Center to foster a dialogue about the political and legal strategies indigenous and Afro-descendant communities use in the Americas. To foster this dialogue, the Center sponsored a workshop in 2005, entitled Adjudicating Culture, Politicizing Law: Legal Strategies for Black and Indigenous Land Rights Struggles in the America. The Center also co-sponsored a LLILAS Conference entitled Contested Modernities: Indigenous and Afro-descendant Experiences in Latin America. Moreover, the Center has written reports on the collective land rights of Afro-descendants in Colombia and Brazil, and is at present working on a report on similar issues in Ecuador.
In addition to the Center’s work on Afro-descendant land rights in Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador, the Center’s major accomplishments in its first four years include:
- organizing five major annual international multidisciplinary conferences on topics ranging from immigration and asylum to the legacies of the civil war in El Salvador , co-sponsored by institutions within and outside of the University of Texas;
- establishing the nation's first Transnational Worker Rights Clinic and significant work with other law clinics at UT;
- establishing a clinic on Human Rights;
- substantially increasing the number of internships available to UT students to work in human rights at home and abroad;
- promoting human rights research and advocacy at the University and in the Austin community through a variety of academic outreach programs, such as the Human Rights Happy Hour Speaker Series;
- securing the donation of two major human rights archives to the University of Texas and organizing public programs around the content of those archives;
- facilitating the creation of a multi-disciplinary working group to analyze and document human rights violations resulting from U.S. government plans to construct a wall along segments of the Texas/Mexico border and submitting its findings in a public hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights;
- collaborating with LLILAS to establish a concentration in human rights in the M.A. in Latin American Studies; and
- training local high school teachers on using dramatic techniques to teach current human rights issues, in collaboration with the UT Humanities Institute and the Performance as Public Practice Program.
In addition to the grant from the Rapoport Foundation, the Rapoport Center has received funding from the Cain Foundation, the Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Karpen Moffitt Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Law, the Inman Foundation, and numerous individual donors in its first four years. Institutions across campus, including the School of Law, LLILAS, UT Libraries, the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Brazil Center, have also financially supported Center activities.
