STUDENT SURVEY,
QUOTES AND
COMMENTS
This page is divided into three parts and
each part into three sections:
I.
STUDENT SURVEY.
In the 2001 fall semester the
i.
SURVEY QUESTIONS.
ii.
SUMMARY OF STUDENTS' RESPONSES to the survey
questions which was prepared for Chancellor Jo Ann Gora
and Chancellor Gora's reaction to the results of the
survey.
iii.
STUDENT COMMENTS. The fourth
question of the survey asked students if they had any questions or comments
regarding the UMBHRWG goal to establish a human rights center. A selection of their responses may be found
in this section.
II.
ENDORSEMENTS of the
University of Massachusetts Boston Human Rights Working Group's proposal to establish a human rights center at
UMB by:
i.
ADMINISTRATORS.
ii.
FACULTY.
iii.
OTHERS.
III.
QUOTES AND COMMENTS. The purpose of these quotes and
comments is to provoke thought, stimulate discussion, and inspire human rights
activism. Readers are encouraged to
submit additional quotations and comments to umbhrwg@hotmail.com.
i.
FACULTY, STUDENTS AND STAFF COMMENTS regarding
the activities or proposed activities of the University of Massachusetts Human
Rights Working Group (UMBHRWG).
ii.
CELEBRITIES, ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS.
iii.
POETRY AND SONG LYRICS. The purpose of all three sections is to
provoke thought, stimulate discussion, and inspire human rights activism. Readers are encouraged to submit additional
quotations and comments to umbhrwg@hotmail.com.
I. STUDENT SURVEY
i. THE
SURVEY QUESTIONS
Plans
are under way to bring a Human Rights Center to
UMass Boston that would allow students to integrate
human rights issues into their course of study. This survey is to estimate how
many students would be interested in the different services and opportunities
that such a Center could make available. Students are encouraged to fill it out and
return it to umbhrwg@hotmail.com.
iia. SUMMARY
OF SURVEY RESULTS
From: Ben Day
To: Chancellor JoAnn.Gora
Dear Chancellor Gora,
I wanted to write you a note in support of the proposal that has been put together by the UMass Boston Human Rights Working Group.
Students who have participated in the working group with faculty and staff have, during the last semester, conducted a human rights survey attempting to assess what level of interest UMB's students might have in the different services a Human Rights Center could provide. We've processed 636 surveys so far, and the results are remarkable.
331 of the respondents (or 52 percent) said they would be "likely to attend more educational events on human rights issues - such as speakers, forums, and discussion groups" held on campus.
An astounding
310 respondents (48.7 percent) said that, "if a human rights internship
program was established at UMass," they would be
"interested in working for credit with one of many human rights
organizations in the
In response to the survey's third question, 199 respondents (31.3 percent) replied that, if it were available, they thought they would "take advantage of a human rights concentration within [their] expected major allowing [them] to graduate with a Certificate in Human Rights." Just a few examples of the fields in which students wanted to study human rights include "International Human Rights Law," "Rights for Victims of Crimes," "Business (Human Resources)," "Biology (Genetic Fingerprinting and Discrimination)," "Worker's Rights" and "Human Rights in the Work Environment," "Third World Debt Relief," "Women's Rights," "Elders/Gerontology," "Community Planning," "Anthropology (Native American Studies)," and "Latin American Politics."
We can see the academic strengths of UMass Boston clearly reflected in this list, and just as the proposal points out that UMass Boston's curriculum is well-suited for supporting a formal program in human rights, I would add that students' interests here strongly dovetail with human rights issues, and there is a genuine enthusiasm for making this element of their studies more prominent and explicit.
Lastly, the survey asked students whether they had "any other comments or suggestions regarding human rights at UMass Boston." So I'll end this email with a selection of comments by UMass students on the possibility of having a human rights center on campus.
We will finish processing human rights surveys at the end of the semester, and will draft a more comprehensive analysis of its findings for the beginning of next semester. But since this seems to be a crucial period during which the Administration is considering its relation to our efforts, I thought I would share with you some of the promising results we've already received from students in three of the University's five colleges (CAS, CPCS, and Management).
Thank you for considering our proposal, and I hope we can work closely together towards making UMass Boston a center of excellence for human rights research and activism. Best reguards,
----Ben Day
iib. CHANCELLOR GORA'S RESPONSE
Thank you, Ben, for this email in
support of the proposal to establish a Human Rights Center at UMB. I am supportive of
the proposal and heartened by the data you have compiled that show the depth of
student interest. I do hope the Center is successful and that it receives
foundation support to further its efforts.
I wish the institution's own financial resources were not so constrained and
that we could provide financial as well as moral support. Alas, that is
not the case. I admire the enthusiasm of the faculty and students for
building this center. Lastly, I hope you have a good holiday. JG
STUDENT COMMENTS
"I
really hope for the future classes entering into UMass
that they have the opportunity to take courses in human rights. I wish it was
an available major upon my entrance into UMass."
"I would be proud to have an
education in Human Rights. The world needs more of this kind of message."
"I think it would be a good idea
to bring the internship to campus since it is so diverse here and when we leave
to go to the workplace, I think it would help people to understand people
better."
"I'm
excited that we may be getting a human rights program - I think it's a good
move for UMass and specifically a good move for the
nation (and world). I think it is essential to promote this - we need excellent
faculty to draw good students to this program."
"In today's political climate
I find it essential to have a
"Too bad this is being
implemented as I am getting ready to graduate. I think it's a great idea and
should be brought here at UMass."
"Because of the incredible
diversity in a Metropolis like
"I think it would go over really
well here because a lot of students are into helping the community and
bettering the conditions of people overall. I think it's a good idea."
"I think that this is a great
idea. Many people and groups' needs are swept under a rug or avoided. I think
we need to deal with them so Sept. 11th will not happen again."
"Bring it to Campus, it is long overdue in such a diverse
environment."
"I think that Management
Majors should be allowed to get a Human Rights
certificate."
"It's a good educational
background, particularly for international students to educate their
countrymen!"
"I think UMass
Boston should hurry the process and have the Center going. It will be of great
benefit to the people of this area."
"I think a
"I
think it would be a wonderful concentration to add to the existing diversity
and human rights courses currently on the syllabus."
"I
think it's important to have such a program at any college. Here, where we are
such an influential city, I think that brings an even better opportunity for
students to participate in."
"I find it an excellent idea
to open a human rights center and I hope a decision is made to execute these plans."
"I am studying Criminal
Justice. I think Human Rights isses are extremely relevent to the subject. I would take advantage of it [a
certificate program] if it was available for me."
"I think it is a great idea
and it will be very useful for everyone at UMass."
"I think it would be a great
addition to UMass's academic field. Many of the
students would be interested in a program such as this."
"I think a certificate
program in Human Rights would be an asset to the University."
"I think it is a wonderful
idea that the university is considering such an issue. This is one that affects
us all."
"I think it is important to
have a general knowledge of human rights that these programs would
provide."
"UMass needs
this!"
III. OTHER
QUOTES
AND
COMMENTS
The purpose of these quotes and comments
culled from
i.
UMASS
|
ii. CELEBRITIES, ACADEMICS, HUMAN RIGHTS
DOCUMENTS, ETC. |
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|
ACADEMICS |
CELEBRITIES |
HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTS |
|
POLITICAL
FIGURES |
ORGANIZATIONS |
PHILOSOPHERS |
|
RELIGIOUS
LEADERS |
WARRIORS |
WRITERS |
iii. POETRY AND SONG LYRICS.
i. UMASS
BOSTON FACULTY
"We should also note that the human rights
movement is one which, at its foundation, seeks the liberation and empowerment
of human beings. Massachusetts has long been associated with the status of a
leader in such movements, whether we look at the U.S' push towards its own
independence, the abolition of slavery, the rights of women, the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1960s, or the anti-Apartheid movement which
recently helped in the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa. There is
no reason why the homeland of Thoreau, Emerson, and Dickinson...should not
continue that leadership in the human rights movement, through the
Professor Winston
Langley
"I think you and the other members of the working group
should feel enormously proud of all you have accomplished in the last
year. You organized two phenomenally successful forums at UMB; I can't
recall any event garnering so much attention and attendance. The fact
that you had such a robust attendance at a very
harried time of the term reflects well on the working group's excellent
organizational skills and the enthusiasm and sense of competence that it has
generated since last year. Congratulations to the human rights working group
for an outstanding job!"
Professor Elizabeth Bussiere
ii. ACADEMICS,
CELEBRITIES,
DOCUMENTS,
ORGANIZATIONS
ACADEMICS
HUMAN RIGHTS
LITERACY
“Literacy about
Human rights is urgently needed within the university” because human rights
issues touch “many ideals of an open and just society that are the university’s
own ideals: the equal dignity of human
beings; freedom of inquiry and advocacy; broad political participation. Involvement by the university with the
concerns of international human rights should then take active as well as
scholarly expression.”
Henry Steiner,
Professor of Law,
PROLIFERATION
OF RIGHTS
"…almost
all liberal democracies have seen a massive proliferation of new
"rights" over the past generation.
Not content merely to protect life, liberty, and property, many
democracies have also defined right to privacy, travel, employment, recreation,
sexual preference, abortion, childhood, and so on. Needless to say, many of these rights are
ambiguous in their social content and mutually contradictory…The incoherence in
our current discourse on the nature of rights springs from a deeper
philosophical crisis concerning the possibility of a rational understanding of
man. Rights spring directly from an
understanding of what man is, but if there is no agreement on the nature of man, or a belief that such an understanding is in principle
impossible, then any attempt to define rights or to prevent the creation of new
and possibly spurious ones will be unavailing."
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, The Free Press,
A DOG'S LIFE
"A dog is content to sleep in the sun all day provided he is fed, because he is not dissatisfied with what he is. He does not worry that other dogs are doing better than him, or that his career as a dog has stagnated, or that dogs are being oppressed in a distant part of the world. If man reaches a society in which he has succeeded in abolishing injustice, his life will come to resemble that of a dog. Human life, then, involves a curious paradox: it seems to require injustice, for the struggle against injustice is what calls forth what is highest in man."
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, The Free Press,
LEADERS
PAST AND PRESENT
"My concept
of human rights has grown to include not only the right to live in peace, but
also to adequate health care, shelter, food, and to economic
opportunity."
President
Carter, 2002 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance statement.
"Let the
word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch
has bee passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this century, tempered
by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage,
and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to
which this nation has always been committed…"
John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961
"In the
future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded
upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of
speech and expression –everywhere in the
world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world. The third
is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic
understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for
its inhabitants--everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which,
translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such
a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to
commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the
world. That is no vision of a distant
millennium. It is a definite basis for a
kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of
the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to
create with the crash of a bomb. To that new order we oppose the greater
conception –the moral order…The world order which we seek is the cooperation of
free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society."
"Human
rights—the finest expression of the values that have sustained our nations
since its birth—are the best long-range basis for
Paul D. Wellstone, Former Senator
"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice…"
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, Number I.
RELIGIOUS
LEADERS
First They Came for the Jews
First
they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor
Martin Niemöller
WRITERS
The law, in its
majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges,
to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole France, The
Red Lily, 1894, chapter 7
DOCUMENTS
"While the
significance of national and regional particularities and various historical,
cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of
States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to
promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms."
iii. POETRY AND LYRICS
POETRY
FOR
WHOM THE
Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris - "Now, this bell tolling softly for another,
says to me: Thou must die."
PERCHANCE he for
whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and
perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are
about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not
that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does
belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that
child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when
she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is
one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but
translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God
employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness,
some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his
hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every
book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a
sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so
this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door
by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were
mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the
morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.
If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening
prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application,
that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll
for him that `thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that
minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not
up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off
his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell
which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it
from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed
away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well
as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were:
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a
borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but
must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an
excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any
man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and
ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure
in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his
treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the
nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get
nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and
sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and
be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out
and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I
take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse
to my God, who is our only security.
John Donne, "Devotions
upon Emergent Occasions" (1623), XVII:
LYRICS
BLOWIN' IN THE WIND
How
many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Bob Dylan
The
Sound Of Silence
Hello
darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In
restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street
lamp
I turn my collar to the cold and damp
When
my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And
in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb
the sound of silence
"Fools,"
said I, "you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And
echoed in the wells of silence
And
the people bowed and prayed
To
the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said "The words of the prophets are
written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sound of silence
P. Simon, 1964