News

2024: Lehman's Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies was awarded an Enhanced RFCuny grant in 2024. The grant will support the creation of a local human rights index (L-HRI). The L-HRI will establish benchmarks for several economic and social rights and be operated by Lehman College’s Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies. As an anchor program for the Center, the L-HRI will better enable the Center to convene conferences around pressing social justice issues, engage positively and collaboratively with local and city governmental agencies, build partnerships with local organizations who are working to secure social and economic rights, and create experiential learning opportunities that help students apply academic knowledge to genuine community needs.

2024: Lehman’s Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies successfully completed its recertification process with the City University of New York. Recertification requests have undergone a rigorous review, guided by the criteria stated in the new University Board of Trustees Policy, including reports on the fiscal viability, governance, and continued value of a specific center, institute, or consortium

2022: Lehman's Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies was awarded the 2022 Flowers Foundation Grant for work in human rights education. Every year, the Flowers Fund, a project of Human Rights Educators USA, provides small grants to support innovation and mentorship in human rights education. The fund aims to encourage new philosophic and theoretical thinking, new pedagogies, and new outreach methods for HRE, as well as emerging leadership in the field. The Center, together with Lehman College's Department of Middle and High School Education, aims to help high schools around New York City establish student-led human rights clubs. The goal is to create service-learning opportunities for students to reflect on and contribute to remedying local human rights injustices. Service-learning is a form of experiential learning in which students acquire and apply the skills needed to identify urgent community needs. Students learn leadership skills, develop cultural and racial understandings, and practice civic engagement, and their work alerts teachers, scholars, and grassroots organizers to emerging injustices. Lehman College has, through conferences and educational programs, created a loose network of restorative justice practitioners and educators. Lehman's Department of Middle and High School Education and the Center for Human Rights and Peace Studies aim to strengthen this network and collaborate with human rights clubs and their respective schools to address ongoing and emerging educational injustices in NYC.