Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute

09/10/2026

Our student guest blogger, Lei He, is back on the Duke Human Rights Blog this week! Her new post, "Who Saves the Workers Who Make the Sacred?" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. Lei spent the summer in China conducting interviews with workers in stone carving factories, particularly those carving Buddha statues, many of whom suffer from illnesses caused by exposure to mineral dust in those factories. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/news/who-saves-workers-who-make-sacred
Lei He was recently chosen as one of 16 winners of the 53rd Student Academy Awards competition in the Alternative/Experimental category for her film "Drifting." Her winning film is now eligible to be nominated for the 99th Academy Awards!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

https://humanrights.fhi.duke.edu/news/who-saves-workers-who-make-sacred

09/08/2026

Tickets are now available for M. Gessen: Hope, Hopelessness & Human Rights in a Time of Autocracy! See linktree in bio for the ticket link, or visit the Duke Box Office website.
Gessen will be joining us on September 28 at 6pm in Page Auditorium. One of our most trenchant observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Opinion writer at The New York Times, they have covered political subjects including Russia, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the rise of autocracy among others. Gessen's essential book Surviving Autocracy is a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration. They are currently at work on a biography of Hannah Arendt.
Free event, but registration is required. Tickets are available now through Duke Box Office.
The Rights and Humanities Annual Series is jointly sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) and the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI and is co-presented this year by the Provost's Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging.

M. Gessen

09/07/2026

Our student guest blogger, Katelyn Zeser, is back this week! Her new post, "Jerusalem, Just One Click Away: Holy Land Tourism Then and Now" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. In her new post, Katelyn explores the history and technological evolution of American evangelical groups' promotion of tourism to Israel. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Katelyn Zeser is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Cultural Anthropology.

09/03/2026

Our Student Stories: Summer Research Series continues this week with Lei He's blog post, "The Closer to the Sacred Mountain, the More Demons Appear." Lei spent the summer in China conducting interviews with workers in stone carving factories, particularly those carving Buddha statues, many of whom suffer from illnesses caused by exposure to mineral dust in those factories. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Lei He was recently chosen as one of 16 winners of the 53rd Student Academy Awards competition in the Alternative/Experimental category for her film "Drifting." Her winning film is now eligible to be nominated for the 99th Academy Awards!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Lei He is an Experimental and Documentary Arts major in the Master of Fine Arts class of 2027.

09/01/2026

“Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner”
Presented in Duke Human Rights Center’s Rights! Camera! Action! Series
Thursday September 10, 12:00-1:30pm
Location: Smith Warehouse, Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Bay 4, C105
Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner (Brad Bailey, 2024, 30m)
Box lunch provided. Discussion to follow with Director Brad Bailey and Mrs. Gwen Carr.
The short documentary centers on Gwen Carr’s enduring fight for justice following the 2014 death of her son, Eric Garner, after being pinned to the ground in a chokehold by a police officer in Staten Island. The New York City medical examiner stated the cause of death as a homicide. Garner’s final words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry in protests against police violence and systemic racism across the United States. Filmed over several years, the documentary places Carr’s voice at its core, tracing her transformation from grieving mother to nationally recognized advocate for accountability and human rights.
Winner of the 2026 Human Rights Digital Storytelling Award sponsored by the David M. Rubenstein Rare book and Manuscript Library.
Sponsored by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Co-sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center @ FHI

Screening: Her Fight, His Name: The Story of Gwen Carr and Eric Garner

08/28/2026

Our student guest blogger, Jungwon Kim, is back on the Duke Human Rights Blog this week! Her new post, "A Resolve to Remember" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. Jungwon spent 3 weeks this summer in central Vietnam studying how local Vietnamese communities remember massacres committed by South Korean troops during the American War in Vietnam and how these memories persist despite limited recognition in South Korean public discourse. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Jungwon Kim is a Program II major in the class of 2029.

08/25/2026

Our student guest blogger, Phoenix Chapital, is back this week! Her new post, "At a Site of Remembering: The Whitney Plantation and the Graves of the Lost" is the latest in our Student Stories: Summer Research Series. Phoenix spent the summer in New Orleans "exploring the differences between predominantly white cemeteries and predominantly Black cemeteries to better understand how methods of burial and preservation can lead to dispossession even beyond death." Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Phoenix Chapital is a Robertson Scholar majoring in English Literature, pursuing the Human Rights Certificate, in the class of 2027.

08/20/2026

Jungwon Kim is our Student Stories: Summer Research Series guest blogger this week with her post, "The War That Never Ended: Tracing Memory in Central Vietnam." Jungwon spent 3 weeks this summer in central Vietnam studying how local Vietnamese communities remember massacres committed by South Korean troops during the American War in Vietnam and how these memories persist despite limited recognition in South Korean public discourse. Check it out on the Duke Human Rights Blog!
Student Stories: Summer Research Series chronicles the experiences of 8 students who were awarded our Human Rights Summer Research Grant this year. Keep up with their stories on the Duke Human Rights Blog this summer and fall!

Jungwon Kim is a Program II major in the class of 2029.