Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute

10/02/2026

Our student guest blogger, Nilay Ghodasara, is back this week! His new post is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. This summer, Nilay spoke with election officials across six states to explore what “election integrity” means in practice — from voter access and identification requirements to ballot verification and post-election audits.

His research left him with a more complicated understanding of election integrity and the importance of systems that can check themselves.

Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
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Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Nilay Ghodasara, Class of 2027, studies Economics, Public Policy, and History.

09/30/2026

Our student guest blogger, Yiwa Deng, is back this week! Her new post, “Who Gets to Say What an Artifact Is?” is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. In her post, Yiwa reflects on her summer research across museums and historic sites in China, exploring how 3D technology can help restore the context and identity of displaced Chinese artifacts. From Buddhist sculptures to ancient ritual bronzes, she considers what changes when artifacts are returned to the spaces, relationships and communities that gave them meaning.

Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog! . .
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Yiwa Deng is a Graduate Liberal Studies student in the class of 2027.

09/23/2026

Our student guest blogger, Nikki Tora, is back this week! Her new post, “Looking for Accountability, Finding Something More,” is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. In her post, Nikki reflects on her summer with the Pennsylvania Prison Society, where she examined how prison advocacy can serve as a mechanism of accountability. Through reading letters from incarcerated people and their loved ones, she began to see how recurring concerns can reveal broader patterns — and how advocacy can create opportunities for action even when organizations cannot require institutions to change.

Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog! . .
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Nicole Tora is a public policy major in the Class of 2027.

09/22/2026

Hadji Bakara’s Writing for Dark Times tells the story of the writer’s distinct place in the history of human rights. It argues that the relationship between the creative work of writing and the pursuit of universal rights is an important but misunderstood dimension of both literary and human rights history over the past century.
Bakara will be speaking at Duke University on Tuesday, October 6, at 11:45am. Please join us!
Sponsored by Duke English Department

Writing for Dark Times - Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute

09/11/2026

Featured this week on the Duke Human Rights Blog is a piece from our DHRC Program Assistant and Human Rights Certificate student, Aseel Ibrahim, on global mental health human rights violations. Aseel is a Public Policy and Global Health major in the class of 2027. Check our linktree in bio to find the piece!

For years, a man in Indonesia slept on a wooden platform with chains around his ankles. His world became a small space behind his family’s home. Day after day, he remaine

09/10/2026

Our student guest blogger, Lei He, is back on the Duke Human Rights Blog this week! Her new post, "Who Saves the Workers Who Make the Sacred?" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. Lei spent the summer in China conducting interviews with workers in stone carving factories, particularly those carving Buddha statues, many of whom suffer from illnesses caused by exposure to mineral dust in those factories. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/news/who-saves-workers-who-make-sacred
Lei He was recently chosen as one of 16 winners of the 53rd Student Academy Awards competition in the Alternative/Experimental category for her film "Drifting." Her winning film is now eligible to be nominated for the 99th Academy Awards!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/news/who-saves-workers-who-make-sacred

09/08/2026

Tickets are now available for M. Gessen: Hope, Hopelessness & Human Rights in a Time of Autocracy! See linktree in bio for the ticket link, or visit the Duke Box Office website.
Gessen will be joining us on September 28 at 6pm in Page Auditorium. One of our most trenchant observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion writer at The New York Times, they have covered political subjects including Russia, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the rise of autocracy among others. Gessen's essential book Surviving Autocracy is a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. They are currently at work on a biography of Hannah Arendt.
Free event, but registration is required. Tickets are available now through Duke Box Office.
The Rights and Humanities Annual Series is jointly sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI and is co-presented this year by the Provost's Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging.

M. Gessen

09/07/2026

Our student guest blogger, Katelyn Zeser, is back this week! Her new post, "Jerusalem, Just One Click Away: Holy Land Tourism Then and Now" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. In her new post, Katelyn explores the history and technological evolution of American evangelical groups' promotion of tourism to Israel. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Katelyn Zeser is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology.