News

Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin has been admitted to the Royal Irish Academy.

The Royal Irish Academy, based in Dublin, is an independent academic body that promotes study and excellence in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

Please tell us about your Human Rights Lab project. What was the work and what was this experience like for you personally?

On Feb. 12, U.S. Immigration Judge Audrey Carr granted asylum to a Honduran woman who is a client of the Law School’s Immigration and Human Rights Clinic.

While working as a transit police officer in Honduras, the client refused to accept bribes from gangs who sought to procure drivers licenses for their members and information about police operations. Because she refused to comply, the client was threatened by the gang and eventually she and her family were attacked by gunmen at their home. The client fears that if she returns to Honduras, she will be killed.

On Feb. 12, U.S. Immigration Judge Audrey Carr granted asylum to a Honduran woman who is a client of the Law School’s Immigration and Human Rights Clinic.

While working as a transit police officer in Honduras, the client refused to accept bribes from gangs who sought to procure drivers licenses for their members and information about police operations. Because she refused to comply, the client was threatened by the gang and eventually she and her family were attacked by gunmen at their home. The client fears that if she returns to Honduras, she will be killed.

The University of Minnesota human rights faculty has been awarded a $325,000 Grand Challenges Research Grant. The grant will support “The Minnesota Model,” an interdisciplinary initiative to understand and propose solutions to the recent backsliding in human rights around the world. This project builds on and expands the Minnesota Human Rights Lab.

David S. Weissbrodt has collected documents that fill 100 file cabinets. He has shepherded more than 500 interns into his chosen field. He has founded a Human Rights Center at Minnesota Law that turns 30 this year. But for this internationally renowned human rights lawyer, author, scholar, teacher, and advocate, who officially retired Sept. 1, the work is never done.

At a special program celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Human Rights Center, Professor Michael Posner, a former top U.S. State Department official and well-known human rights advocate and scholar, marked the occasion with a celebration of the progress made on human rights in the last three decades and exhortation to continue to build on that work.

On April 26, Professor John Bessler, a visiting researcher at the Human Rights Center, gave a book talk on his latest book, The Celebrated Marquis: An Italian Noble and the Making of the Modern World (2018). The book provides a fascinating account of the Italian criminologist and economist Cesare Beccaria (1734-94), and his landmark work that inveighed against judicial torture, the death penalty, and religious intolerance.

Minnesota Women Lawyers (MWL) recently named 2L Rebecca Rosefelt as the 2018 recipient of the MWL Equal Justice Award.

MWL annually invites all Minnesota law students to submit papers on topics involving law and social justice for consideration for the Equal Justice Award.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has appointed Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, University Regents Professor and holder of the Robina Chair in Law, Public Policy, and Society, as the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.