Student Life

The community of the Human Rights Program goes beyond the classroom. In addition to weekly dinners and student-organized social events, the Program hosts a reception at the beginning of each semester in the law school for students to gather with the Program Directors and members of the Faculty Advisory Committee.

Additionally, each year, students meet periodically with the Program Directors to discuss their academic work, in addition to their summer and post-graduate plans.

Weekly Dinners

Human Rights Scholars gather with the other members of their cohort in weekly dinners. For sophomores in the Program, dinners often feature guests – members of the Faculty Advisory Committee or visiting activists and scholars – who discuss their work and answer students’ questions on their interests and career paths. For their weekly dinners, juniors in the Program take turns leading discussions on topics of their choice, from debriefing campus activism to debating the concept of open borders. Seniors in the Program arrange informal dinners where they discuss post-graduate options and hear from Human Rights Program alumni who have gone on to pursue jobs or further study in human rights. Students are expected to attend weekly dinners in the spring of their sophomore year and the fall of their junior year.

Peer Mentorship

The Human Rights Program fosters mentorships not only between faculty and students, but also between different classes in the Program. Seniors and juniors with similar interests in human rights are paired together, and when sophomores enter the Program, they join these peer mentorship groups. Peer mentorship groups meet for coffee and meals throughout the year. Older students offer advice on courses, extracurricular activities, and summer internships; younger students provide their senior mentor with feedback on their capstone project.

Schell Center Events

In their sophomore spring, students are required to attend three events sponsored by the Schell Center and write short reflections on these events to be submitted by the end of the semester. In the rest of their time in the Program, students are required to write and submit one event reflection each semester. Juniors and seniors should send their event reflection to shannon.sommers@yale.edu no later than two weeks after the event took place.

These events, which feature human rights practitioners and scholars from around the world, offer a chance for all Yale undergraduates to explore the range of work conducted in the human rights field and to meet inspiring lawyers, filmmakers, activists, academics, politicians, doctors, and other professionals. The reflections are a way for students in the Program to engage with speakers’ ideas and work on a deeper level.

Summer Experience

The Schell Center provides resources to Yale undergraduates interested in pursuing human-rights related summer internships and research projects in the U.S. and abroad. Schell Center faculty refer students to relevant organizations and positions, and the Human Rights Program offers its students some funding to pursue summer human rights projects.

Check out our guide to human rights on campus and the Yale Student Grants Database for a more expansive list of grants and fellowships relating to human rights. Also, see the complete list of summer human rights fellowship placements facilitated by the Schell Center since 1999.

Past Summer Opportunities

Isabella Canava (YC '22) worked remotely in summer 2020 for IntegrateNYC’s Immigration Team from her hometown of El Paso, TX. She researched the school-to-deportation pipeline and blueprinted policy to combat the criminalization of immigrant youth in NYC public schools.

Danielle Harris '21 spent a summer advocating for asylum seekers in South Africa at the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town.

In summer 2019, Yale senior Marwan Safar Jalani was working in the Middle East and North Africa division of the Human Rights Watch headquarters in New York City. His internship focused on researching the Syrian government practices in checkpoints, detention centers and prisons.

Brenda Cachay was in DC in summer 2019 with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an entity whose goal is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere through an individual petition system, monitoring, and training.

Joelle Besch (YC '21) worked in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan at For Families, a nonprofit that focuses on creating well-being, respect, and equality for families in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Maria Melchor (YC ’18) spent a summer in Geneva researching immigration detention regimes in North America for the Global Detention Project.