The Harvard College Human Rights Review aims to create new spaces to create, research and advocate for civil and human rights issues on campus and in our broader communities. We believe in the potential for both academic and creative work to productively intervene in representations of, and responses to, instances of systemic abuse domestically and around the world. Discussions around human rights can often be abstract and totalizing. Instead, our hope is to bring together a diverse group of individuals committed to specific issues, who work together to find intersections for collaboration and who jointly question how we may engage with instances of urgent injustice, both now and in future careers and creative practices.

The question of representation is central to this mission. This year, we have worked for the first time on poetry, fiction and photography in addition to research articles and journalism. We will continue to add other artistic mediums in the future. These creative forms enable us to intervene in a way that is distinct from the numbing reportage that most often accompanies human rights abuse. Most importantly, we have (albeit still insufficiently) begun to include the representations of individuals facing the issues that we are writing about themselves, such as the work of the poet Rahima Hazara, and the collaborative writing undertaken by Poetry Co-Editor, Alexander Greenberg. Working together with those facing the conditions we research should always be our starting point and guiding principle.

This year we have welcomed a talented new class of Fellows, and its pages and our organization as a whole are far richer for their words and could not exist without their significant efforts. In this Review you will find a wide array of engaged work, from research articles on the intersection of indigenous land rights and environmentalism in the United States, to poetry on the experiences of refugees in Indonesia.
 

I give huge thanks to the 2018-2019 Board, whose leadership and creativity has been crucial to producing this Issue and revitalising the HCHRR. I would especially like to thank Lucy Golub, Head of Design, for her relentless work and expertise in designing this publication, and Hasib Muhammad, Business Director, for his tireless efforts fundraising for the Review.

 

Through the Harvard College Human Rights Review, we will continue to work to build a larger and wide-ranging human rights-focused group at Harvard College that is deeply rooted in both the local community and transnational issues. I am excited to follow what the Board for 2019-2020 will achieve, and the changes they will make to continue to develop this organization. We recognise the power of academic and creative interventions to make a tangible impact on the pressing global issues that our Fellows commit themselves to. We hope that these pages will continue to be filled with work that pushes boundaries, expands understanding, catalyzes action, and makes a concrete impact on our global community.

It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you to the 2018-2019 edition of the Harvard College Human Rights Review.

 

 

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