Credits: Dr. Felisa Tibbitts
By HRH Editors and Rafaella Monesi
As of September 2024, one of the founding editors of the HRH blog, Prof. Dr. Felisa Tibbitts, took a step back from the editorial board. To acknowledge this important shift in the blog management team, we would like to use this opportunity to shine a light on the significant expertise and insights that Felisa has brought to the blog, and by extension to the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, over the last five years. Given the logistical difficulties of working remotely – Felisa is based in the US –Dr Amy Weatherburn, fellow HRH editor and our current HRH intern Rafaella Monesi, joined Felisa for a virtual cup of (morning/afternoon) coffee (depending on the time zone) to reminisce about some of the highlights of Felisa’s time as a member of the blogs editorial board.
AW: First of all, it goes without saying, but we are going to miss you! All of us here at HRH want to express just how much of a privilege it has been to work with you over the years and we want to ensure that fellow NNHRR members and blog readers also have the opportunity to bid you farewell.
It is particularly pertinent that the blog is celebrating its 5th birthday, and as a founding member of the blog, can you share with us why you wanted to set up a human rights blog in the first place, and a subsequent highlight that not only underscores the ethos of the blog as you had envisaged it upon inception but also its potential impact?
FT: Let me first say that I will miss being part of the current HRH editorial team! I’ve been inspired by every person’s know-how and dedication to human rights. I’ve also learned a lot by reading the comments of my fellow editors on submissions. I will miss this, though I’ll continue to benefit from the published blogs!
I am only one of the founding editors of the HRH blog. It was set up by several of us, two of whom are still editors: Elif Durmuş and Katerina Tsampi. We always had clear ideas about what the blog might do. We wanted it to be a platform for Dutch doctoral candidates and early career researchers, though we didn’t restrict authors to these categories. We also envisioned that it would be a blog to address legal and policy issues from the perspective of human rights, but in a way that would be accessible to a wider range of people, not just legal scholars. In a way we were casting a wide net in terms of who might submit, what topics might be addressed, and who our readership would be.
I do think that HRH has been largely successful in reaching these aims. If you go to the blog website, you can see the impressive array of themes it has addressed, including AI, climate change, national and regional courts, and so on. It’s exciting to see how the blog has incorporated topics and authors from the Netherlands, Europe and beyond. I think that the blog continues to improve.
RM: Felisa, you are a world-renowned expert in human rights education, what was it initially sparked your interest in (international) human rights?
FT: Thanks for this question! In my studies and early career, I was originally interested in education for democracy and peace, on the heels of my engagement in the U.S. peace movement in the 1980s. However, when the Berlin Wall came down I started doing research in Central and Eastern Europe and educational reform. I wanted to understand how regime changes in the region would influence the content of education. That’s when I saw quite clearly the link between education for democracy and human rights. Incredibly, I got hired by the Netherlands Helsinki Committee to help design and implement educational reform projects in the region. My colleagues were Dutch human rights lawyers, including Prof. Arie Bloed and Wilco de Jonge (currently Director of the College voor de Rechten van de Mens). All of us on staff were carrying out human rights education with different target groups. Mine were Ministries of Education and educators in middle and secondary schools. Learning about human rights later in life helped me to make human rights digestible and understandable for non-lawyers.
RM: What for you is the most pressing issue in human rights education today?
FT: I don’t think that I can identify any single issue, though I would say that the potential for HRE is that it brings us back to the radical potential of human rights. So that’s the question for me, which I credit colleagues from the global south for: how can the notion of human rights be revitalized and reimagined so that they are relevant for people’s daily lives and a driver of social and political action?
The discrete challenges that come to mind:
- The absence of human rights within national education curricula due to political sensitivities or a superficial treatment that reduces human rights to simple facts rather than as a frame for critiquing society and motivating people to take action;
- The need for human rights to address pressing issues that people care about, and to be both self-critiquing as well as transformative.
I mention these challenges but actually, there’s been quite a bit of progress over the past decades in terms of human rights finding its way into a wide range of formal and nonformal education settings. Prior to the 1990s, you really only learned about human rights in law school, or rarely as part of resistance movements. That’s changed.
AW: Given the necessity to continue engaging with human rights related matters, as you have just highlighted in relation to revitalising and reimagining the power of human rights. Why do you believe platforms like the HRH blog are a vital component of the human rights research community, both in the Netherlands and beyond?
FT: Great question! The blog brings human rights analysis to the public around pressing topics of the day. Not all of us are based in law schools. But we all benefit from evidence-based research, as well as theoretical and legal analysis, in grappling with the human rights implications of different challenges. For example, on the topic of the climate crisis, the blog has addressed the role of the International Court of Justice, climate anxiety in teaching, and the implications of the right to a healthy environment in situations of conflict. The blogs don’t necessarily provide ready-made answers, but they point the way to greater understanding and potential engagement with these topics by the public. That’s really important.
RM: And for students and young professionals who are just starting their careers in human rights, what advice would you give them as they navigate this field? How can they best engage with platforms like the HRH blog to make meaningful contributions and deepen their knowledge?
FT: Working in the human rights field is such a noble pursuit! I am regularly inspired by students and young people who feel that human rights is their vocation. Honestly, I wish that there were more jobs available! However, even if you’re not able to get a job that is explicitly human rights-related, there are many, many ways to carry out work and voluntarism that promote social justice and human rights. Engaging with the blog as a reader and contributor, for example, can keep you connected to the wider human rights movement in the Netherlands and beyond.
AW: What for you would be the most important piece of advice you would like to share with your fellow editors to ensure that over the next five years of the blog continues to be a meaningful conduit for collaboration and engagement amongst human rights academics?
FT: I would say, with a bit of a wink, to be sure to keep people on the editorial board who are non-lawyers such as myself. This will help ensure that the blogs remain accessible for those not based in law schools.
AW: Thank you very much for taking us down a trip down memory lane. So that our readers can continue to follow your research trajectory, can you give us a hint as to what type of research projects you are currently working on as you take a step back from HRH blog editorial duties?
FT: I am trying to take my own advice by focusing on pressing challenges, so a central focus is environmental sustainability. I’ve done some research on education for sustainable development and decoloniality but have focused most of my efforts on curriculum development. I’ve done some work with UNESCO and, most recently, with the European Wergeland Centre (teacher resource and training institute). I expect to remain focused on climate change education in the years to come.
I’ve also been doing research and curriculum development on human rights, AI and education. Those of you based in the Netherlands are warmly welcomed to come to a panel I am organizing at Utrecht University on 14 November where I will be exploring this topic along with representatives from Utrecht University law school, education department and the Dutch UNESCO Commission! You can find out more about this event here.
AW & RM: We wish you all the best and hope that our paths cross with you again soon! Perhaps with a blog submission, you are always welcome!
Bio:
Felisa Tibbitts is Chair in Human Rights Education at SIM at the Department of Law, Economics and Governance at the University of Utrecht. Her research interests include peace, human rights and global citizenship education; curriculum policy and reform; critical pedagogy; and human rights and higher education transformation. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.