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Credit: Photo by Nick Romanenko
Ph.D. student Maranda Vata is the
director of the Human Rights House at
Douglass College, where like-minded
students can live and work together.
Vata, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo,
learned the role of education in
combating human rights violations while
attending illegal, underground schools
in her native country.
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The 15 residents of the new Human Rights House at Douglass College are optimistic and confident as they prepare to take on some of the most serious issues of the world.
Ghoncheh Ghiasian, a sophomore, wants to return to her native Iran as a physician. Junior Jessica Ma dreams of becoming a photojournalist and documenting slavery in places like the Sudan. Isabel Avalos, a senior who grew up in Englewood and whose parents are from Peru and Mexico, hopes to become a child social worker in New Jersey. Miranda Vata, the house director and a doctoral student in global studies, will work in education, which she sees as the most effective weapon against terror.
“I think a lot of things that happen in this world happen because people aren’t educated to understand things, and they’re being manipulated,” Vata says. “It’s much easier to be manipulated by a leader who seems so powerful and so smart if you’re not educated.”
The students embark this year on interdisciplinary study of the causes and effects – and, with luck, some of the solutions – to global human rights violations. The human rights quarters is the newest addition to Douglass College’s Global Village program, in which students study a foreign language or culture and live together. Douglass has residential learning communities in Spanish and French, an East Asia House and an Africana House.
Students in the Human Rights House will travel and work in Guatemala this winter and produce a video documentary about their experience there. The study-abroad component will be financed by the Associate Alumnae of Douglass College.
"Study abroad is essential to the Human Rights House experience and, to a growing degree, the Douglass experience," said Dean Carmen Twillie Ambar of Douglass College, who traveled this summer to Kenya with a group of anthropology students from Rutgers and other universities. "It is completely transformative. You go abroad and, one, you become utterly grateful, and two, you understand that we have a lot of work to do in this world."
Charlotte Bunch, whose semester-long course on gender and human rights will be required this year of all the residents, spearheaded the human rights component of the project. “What we need today more than ever is for our students to have direct contact with men and women in other parts of the world, to better understand their lives and how they are affected by U.S. policy as well,” says Bunch, a professor of women’s studies and executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership. “This is especially important for women, because women have begun to look at and define human rights in an important way, taking on leadership roles and bringing human rights into the forefront.”
Vata, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, has personal experience in human rights issues. After the Serbian government shut her school in war-torn Pristina in the 1990s, Vata risked beatings and worse at the hands of Serbian police to attend illegal, underground lessons in her native Albanian language. She emerged from that experience valuing education as the best antidote for the disenfranchisement and desperation that ultimately lead to terrorism.
The approach resonates for Ghiasian, who is looking ahead to leveraging her American education as a physician in Iran. “I am going to be educated for a reason,” she said. “To help those who are less educated, who don’t have the capabilities of coming to America and getting the best medical care.”
Dean Ambar will host a celebration to launch the Human Rights House Oct. 19 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the New Gibbons Residence Hall B on the Douglass campus. For information and directions, call 2-9721.
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