ABSTRACT
The Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) of the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston is a four-year-old group composed of students, staff, faculty, and human rights activists from the wider community. 1 One of the greatest features of the HRWG is its diversity in gender, race/ethnicity, age, class, occupation, and sexual orientation. Working together in such a diverse group has widened our individual perspectives and provided the opportunity to learn from each other in an atmosphere of respect for our differences. As we strove for a group process that reflected our engagement to human rights, our mission and our goals became more clear and distinct. Based in an urban, public, non-residential, research-intensive institution, the group is committed to a vision of the urban mission of UMass Boston that promotes economic and social justice. Of the 13,000 [in 2005] students enrolled at the university, 60 percent are the first in their families to gain higher education in the US. Within this demographic, a significant portion of the student body has overcome great economic adversities, migration losses, the fallout from violent communities, and unfair distribution of social resources. Our student body has a rich base of experiential knowledge that has allowed our group to tie theory with practice in our work, making human rights education truly relevant within our community.
