On behalf of the Donia Human Rights Center, I wish you and your family the best for the holidays and new year.
Even as wars and ensuing atrocities continue unabated in many regions, the Donia Center offers an opportunity for serious and informed discussion of major human rights challenges facing people all over the world. Our Wallenberg Medal and Lecture this year featured Nnimmo Bassey, an environmental rights advocate in Nigeria; and we have hosted programs on reproductive rights, reparations for slavery, the rule of law in Latin America, and the role of artists in promoting human rights in post-genocide Cambodia. I am pleased that all these events have been well attended by students across the campus and other stakeholders. We look forward to a full slate of speakers in 2025. In addition, the students in the Donia Human Rights Fellows Program are gaining the chance to specialize in the study of human rights through their coursework. And this year we offered a record number of summer fellowships to undergraduates for internships and graduate students for their dissertations.
The center will continue to engage with the pressing human rights challenges of our times, to look beyond the headlines at the manifold threat to human dignity posed by governments and other powerful actors. We hope you will join us in this project.
Steven Ratner
Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law
Director, University of Michigan Donia Human Rights Center
