Trying to Right Wrongs: Stanford Magazine Article
English
The Stanford alumni magazine featured the Handa Center in its May/June 2017 issue.
Trying to Right Wrongs
The Handa Center spurs human rights education and action
" FOR FRESHMAN HANNAH SMITH, landing this summer’s internship at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., was a bit like winning a jackpot as soon as she sat down at the card table. She came to Stanford with her eye on the Haas Center for Public Service but then was introduced to the Handa Center for Human Rights and International Justice. And it’s the Handa Center—at Stanford only a few years but rapidly expanding its impact—that is providing the fellowship for her summer program.
USIP’s projects, dedicated to preventing and resolving conflicts around the world, are a gateway to practical career training for the intensely focused Smith. “This is my first opportunity to be engaged directly,” she says.
Placements like Smith’s, plus some that involve events making international news, are a signature of the Handa Center’s impact on undergraduate education. Among the most prominent examples have been internships monitoring the Khmer Rouge Tribunal—Cambodian government trials of members of the country’s Communist Party. One Handa fellowship student coordinated children’s activities in a refugee camp in Greece; another interned for the International Labor Rights Forum in D.C., working on issues concerning the garment industry in Bangladesh."