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[Amnesty International USA] My name is Dr. Rick Halperin. I am in the history department here, but I'm also at Southern Methodist University in Dallas,

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but I'm also the director of the university's human rights programme, and have been since its inception in July of 2006. I joined Amnesty when I was a university undergraduate student, way back in 1971.

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So I've been affiliated with them for 52 years, a long time. I first heard of Amnesty International when I took my sophomore year abroad in Paris in 1968, pretty tumultuous year to be studying in Paris.

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And I heard of Amnesty when I was in London in January of 1969. And that's when I knew that I could do human rights work. And I joined when they came to Washington DC in 1971.

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[Tell us more about your affiliation with Amnesty International USA] When I first heard-- when I joined Amnesty back in 1971, the war in Vietnam was still going on.

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And when people heard the word Amnesty International, but the word amnesty, most people thought that it was an organisation that was giving amnesty to young guys like myself who didn't want to go to Vietnam.

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They thought it was a draft dodger organisation and not a human rights organisation. Not many people were speaking about human rights back in 1971.

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So there was a lot of misapprehension about what the organisation was, what it stood for, what human rights were. When I came here in 1971 for graduate school

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and I founded the SMU chapter, again, people were asking me if this was related to the war in Vietnam. My main topics of interest then with Amnesty, I was certainly taken aback and wanted

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to do death penalty work, anti-death penalty work. The death penalty then was still legal in the United States as it is today. We had not hit the 1972 moratorium on it.

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And I was really taken with Amnesty's work on torture. They had buttons. It's a very visual thing. They had buttons that had CAT on them

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for campaign against torture. And I was very active in working with the campaigns against torture. And actually, that was the reason

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Amnesty won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, was for their work to educate about torture. [What were the major areas of focus for Amnesty International USA at the time and how has that changed today?]

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Amnesty USA back in the early '70s was not the amnesty of today. It's not what people want to hear. But it's true, Amnesty was a good old boys club back then.

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It wasn't a mass movement. It hadn't taken off. It was not very diverse. I used to go to the annual general meetings.

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And some of those early meetings, they had less than 100 people at them. There were a lot of lawyers mostly doing human rights work. Amnesty then focused on a mandate.

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And it had just a very limited number of areas that it worked on, including prisoners of conscience, POCs. There was a lot of acronyms in those days. A lot of work for nonviolent people in gaol.

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The Cold War was still on. There was a Soviet Union. And there were a lot of political dissidents in gaol around the world, including in Eastern Europe.

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Every country in Eastern Europe had people in gaol for opposition to the Soviet regimes in those countries. Amnesty in the early years was not

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doing anti-death penalty work. They didn't take that up until the late '70s, I'm happy to say. But in those early years, Amnesty

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didn't touch that issue. Now of course, in the last 40 years or so, Amnesty has completely changed its focus. It's no longer limited to this narrow mandate of just working

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on behalf of non-violent political prisoners of conscience. It works on behalf of the full spectrum of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human

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Rights. It works on behalf of the five types of rights-- civil, social, political, cultural, and economic. And Amnesty switched from the mandate

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to the mission of human rights. So it does much broader based work. It does a lot more coalition work than it used to. I would say those are probably the two biggest

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things I can say of Amnesty. In my time in it, it expanded from a very narrow focus to a broad, thematic coverage of all aspects of human rights. [How does study of the archival record inform our understanding

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of the work of NGOs like Amnesty International?] My answer here is probably pretty biassed because I'm a human rights educator. And anything in human rights is an education issue, anything.

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And so for folks, students such as yourself and other students coming into human rights work in Amnesty, an archival record of what has come before them--

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I'm also a historian. So this is clearly a significant for me to see the connections of what has existed in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

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Since the founding of Amnesty, how did we get in human rights to where we are today? So the fact that Amnesty, the world's largest membership human rights organisation is now archiving its history,

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this is terrific so that future students and historians of human rights can see from the humble beginnings of Peter Benenson's vision to where we are in the world today. It's a phenomenal growth of an idea, the power of an idea.

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And the fact that it's now archived with access to people who are interested in it is significant. [What part does education play in the defence of human rights?]

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Well, again, I brought something because I think it's important to see. I'll put it this way. There's no basic understanding of human rights

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without education. People have to stop saying, I didn't know. So they have to become educated about what human rights are, what their rights are.

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You can't demand human rights if you don't even know what your own rights are. So this is the very first edition of human rights education, The Fourth R. And not many people

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have ever seen these or not enough people have seen them. This is dated from the fall of 1988, when Amnesty's human rights education network started long time ago, what is that, 35 years or so.

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And they didn't-- this is from the fall of '97, almost a decade later. So they changed, but amnesty understood the value of having a human rights educators network

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and I was fortunate, blessed to not only be in human rights education but to work with the founders and the leaders of Amnesty's human rights education network and the creation of this publication.

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So education is inextricably linked to the understanding of human rights. You really can't understand human rights completely and fully if you don't see it

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as the educational issue that it is. [How have Amnesty International historically valued and contributed to education in the sphere of human rights?] I can't even imagine the state of human rights in the world

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today without Amnesty. Amnesty, as I said, it is the world's leading membership organisation of human rights, educating people all over the world virtually from kindergarten,

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elementary schools, high schools, universities, and the general population. I think the real challenge of Amnesty and the human rights in general--

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and I think this programme is the perfect example of it. The real challenge is to make human rights education mandatory, not just in this country but in almost every country in the world.

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This is a global human rights education failure. Most young people, with the exception of those in Scandinavia, are not educated in human rights. So this isn't just an American failure.

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It's a failure of young people or failure to young people around the world to be simultaneously educated about human rights so that when their turn at running this world comes, they have a better

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understanding of the significance of human rights and how it relates to all people instead of the pathetic leadership that most of the world has today by people who are not educated in human rights

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and who violate other people's rights left and right. So this is the key to make this world better, is to educate young people in particular about the significance of human rights

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so they can implement it in their own countries when their turn at leadership comes. That's the challenge. [Human Rights Education]

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So hi, my name is Guadalupe Ramon. I am a senior studying human rights, educational studies, and Spanish. And I'm Asher Thye.

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I graduated about two months ago with degrees in human rights and environmental anthropology. [How do you hope to apply your human rights education after completing study?]

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For me, I have always wanted to work in the education public policy sector. Especially in Texas right now, education is a really hot button topic.

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And so I think one of the ways that I'm actively trying to do that right now is I recently took an internship with the US Consulate of Mexico with the labour attache specifically working with migrant workers, labour rights,

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and gender issues. And a part of that has to do with education policy and how we're working with US companies abroad. And so I think that's one of the ways

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that I'm trying to get into the industry and the sector of education in tangible ways. I do work around both, transgender rights and the environment.

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And I especially love looking for creative intersections of the two where you might not think there will be. And so right now, I'm doing a lot of work around trans rights because it's really difficult to be

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transgender in Texas, which I know from personal experience. And so I've done several trips down to the State Capitol in Austin to testify on legislation, organised events across the state, and spoken on panels,

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and workshops just to try to give people a better idea of what it's like to be transgender. And to help people understand that this isn't something new that it's been invented in the past year or two

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in the news as this cultural bogeyman, but that trans people we've always been here. And we always will be. And that we have to be able to embrace other people to be

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diverse in themselves and to thrive in ways that we can't necessarily control or understand. And I think the same is true of the ethics we need to apply to the environment

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in order to address a change in climate. We have to be willing to let things be diverse and flourish on their own without us having control over all of it. And so I'm really passionate about both of those.

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Well, my job is to help students use their passion in whatever area of human rights it is. Some have a keen sense of what they want to do when they come here to study human rights.

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And some know that they want to study human rights but may not be sure, which is perfectly understandable, at the young ages that they are-- 18, 19, 20 or so to help them realise that there are avenues

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to use their passions for human rights in ways that they know about and in ways that they haven't yet thought about. There is really no limit as to how creative anybody can be because everything involves human rights because it's

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how we treat each other and how we deal with each other. So whatever it is, whether it's in the law, or medicine, or the environment, or public policy, the arts, sports you just can't name anything which

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isn't linked to human rights. And so whatever a student is passionate about doing within human rights, it can be done. [How does the study of the past history of the human rights

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movement contribute to your ongoing activity in this area?] That's actually been one of the ways that Dr. Halperin has impacted SMU human rights students, especially.

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When we first started off our major here, one of the first classes we take is History 3301, America's Dilemma. And the class, we learn high level

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what human rights is, how did we get here, and also how have we failed so bad. And to really know where we're going, we have to know our past.

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And I think that's been one of the greatest lessons that I've had. That to understand where we should go next or where can we move forward, we need

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to understand that past part. So I know, for example with me, I've done some oral history projects with migrant children. And then in my--

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what is it called? The ethics and human rights-- the last project, what is it called? Applied project?

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Capstone? My capstone, yeah. So for my capstone project, I did a deep dive into Chile's history.

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So all those books back there, they've been looked at and read. So that's just one of the ways that I've delved into the past and see how we can move forward from there.

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Yeah, I think one of the things that I've appreciated most about my human rights education here is that there's the really broad scale trends over time of how people fight for their rights.

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And that they're not given willingly. You have to actually work for them and look to solidarity with others to make it happen. And so that's come through classes like Dr. Halperin's

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survey course over human rights in America over time and in the world. But then also, the experiential learning that we get through trips that we go on to see the ways

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that the past maps onto the present to be able to go into a new space and talk to people who have claimed to these histories about the ways that shapes their lives today.

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That informed me in a project that I took on with my training in this programme. It's one of the things that I'm proudest of that I've done is the SMU Pride Project.

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We started with the history of SMU. It's brought into Dallas, our city, more broadly. But me and a couple other people founded this oral history project to talk to LGBT students, faculty,

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staff at SMU past and present. We were able to go back to the mid '70s and talk to folks about what it was like to be LGBT at SMU and in Dallas.

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And for student organisers, the tactics that they've used for almost 50 years to fight for LGBT rights on this campus. And so to be able to have the broad scale paired

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with this really hyper specific, hyperlocal case study of how does it work to make change at SMU. I feel that's just equipped me in unbelievable ways to continue doing this work elsewhere.

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And this oral history work is what I hope to continue doing with my future is to actually talk to people who have experienced things over time and who have fought for LGBT rights over time.

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And learning from past tactics, from the '70s and '80s in order to better inform our work as activists today, but also to help us feel like our work today is less catastrophic than it can feel like sometimes.

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Because as young activists, we have no frame of reference for the work that we're doing. We just know that it's important. And so to be able to situate it in this broader

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context of movements over time, to see the tools that have been used in other intense periods of for LGBT rights has been really impactful. And for us as activists, to get to know our own histories

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and to see ourselves in this lineage has been really, especially, meaningful to me. For example, we, this past spring at the Capitol, staged a protest after a ban on trans youth health care

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was debated. And we were able to speak with leaders from ACT UP, which was incredibly active in LGBT rights in the '70s, and '80s, through the '90s about the tactics

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that they used for creating really striking public imagery around the AIDS epidemic, especially. And so we staged a die in the Capitol, where legislators had to step over our bodies

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as they were leaving the room to help them better understand what was at stake with the violent legislation they were passing. And that's not something that I would have ever

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come up with on my own. And so the fact that we were able to not just learn, from in a book, these histories but to be able to actually talk to people who

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experienced these things and who strategized. Being in this programme and having the experiences and access that we've had made me realise that that's so much more accessible than you think.

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That these people are still around, and in the world, and doing this work. People that we read about in history books and learn about in our history of human rights classes.

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And it's just been incredibly rewarding to realise that both our histories and the world today is so much more connected than we might think it is. Yeah, it's hard to top those replies.

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They're just perfect examples of the truth of human rights, which is, nothing happens in a vacuum. All of us, these young folks, myself, everybody before me, everybody who's going to come after them, we all

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stand on the shoulders of people who have paid a pretty harsh price. So we can have the society we have, with all its flaws, and with all its strengths.

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And to do social justice, work human rights work in any country is very difficult. I would argue it's among the hardest work there is-- to try and change

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people's hearts and minds. People who have had no understanding, or training, or experience in human rights and who are dead set in their ways.

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It's very difficult to push for a social conscience for a school, a city, a state, a country, a world. This is hard work. But it's necessary work because almost everybody can agree

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in the broader principle that we want a better world without all these terrible problems in it. And if you want that kind of a world, then this is the kind of activism

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it takes to get to that world. And that activism is only strengthened through knowledge of education and knowledge of human rights to make that activism meaningful.

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So this is the challenge-- to educate young folks and to have them be active for the world that they deserve. It's what they deserve. This is the struggle.