Paper/Proposal Title
The Campus Human Rights Index: Measuring University Commitment to Human Rights
Location
Impact and Measurement Tools
Start Date
10-4-2019 10:30 AM
End Date
10-4-2019 12:00 PM
Keywords
human rights, campus climate, higher education, diversity
Abstract
To what extent do universities respect human rights? Despite the prevailing view that universities are bastions of progressive ideas with a bias for rights protection, anecdotal evidence suggests that they diverge significantly in their commitment to promote and protect human rights, even within the U.S. To this point, though, there exists no systematic measure of university human rights commitments. In this manuscript, we introduce the first such indicator - the Campus Human Rights Index (CHRI). We describe the measure and introduce our initial ranking of universities. We then formally assess the construct validity of our measure by comparing it to other plausibly related university characteristics. We conclude by describing our future data collection efforts. This paper constitutes our first step in a larger research project that seeks to understand the determinants and consequences of university human rights practices.
Author/Speaker Biographical Statement(s)
Volha Chykina is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Donia Human Rights Center. Her research focuses on how the educational outcomes of immigrant and minority youth are shaped by the communities wherein they live and learn.
Charles Crabtree is a University of Michigan political science doctoral candidate. He defended his dissertation on April, 16, 2019. In academic year 2019 – 2020, he will serve as Senior Data Scientist at Tokyo Foundation; in academic year 2020-2021, he will start as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Dartmouth College. His substantive research focuses on various aspects of repression, human rights, and discrimination.
Kiyoteru Tsutsui is a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. He also directs the International Institute’s Donia Human Rights Center, as well as the Center for Japanese Studies. As a neo-institutional sociologist, he has conducted cross-national quantitative analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics. He has also conducted qualitative case studies on how minority groups have leveraged global human rights to advance their activism. Michelle Bellino is an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. She also co-directs the International Institute’s Conflict and Peace Initiative. Her research centers on how the young understand historical injustice, whether experienced directly or shaped through school curriculum, family narratives, or social movements. She is also involved with Human Rights Educators-USA, a nation-wide network of scholars and practitioners dedicated to promoting human dignity, justice, and peace by cultivating support for human rights education in American universities.
Included in
The Campus Human Rights Index: Measuring University Commitment to Human Rights
Impact and Measurement Tools
To what extent do universities respect human rights? Despite the prevailing view that universities are bastions of progressive ideas with a bias for rights protection, anecdotal evidence suggests that they diverge significantly in their commitment to promote and protect human rights, even within the U.S. To this point, though, there exists no systematic measure of university human rights commitments. In this manuscript, we introduce the first such indicator - the Campus Human Rights Index (CHRI). We describe the measure and introduce our initial ranking of universities. We then formally assess the construct validity of our measure by comparing it to other plausibly related university characteristics. We conclude by describing our future data collection efforts. This paper constitutes our first step in a larger research project that seeks to understand the determinants and consequences of university human rights practices.
