Days before the Spring semester began, members of Wesleyan University’s Human Rights Advocacy Minor (HRAM) received communication about the potential dissolution of the program’s contract with the University Network for Human Rights (UNHR), an external organization based in Middletown, C.T., focusing on the study and practice of global advocacy.

After conversations with the administration about contractual issues within the academic minor, HRAM Steering Committee Co-Chair Stephen Angle set up a meeting with President Michael Roth ’78.

“My understanding of what [President Roth] said, rather clearly, was that he had decided to end the relationship with UNHR,” Angle said.

UNHR began HRAM as a pilot program on a three-year contract with Wesleyan in 2021. As new academic programs are subject to review by the Educational Policy Committee (EPC), the EPC renewed the minor’s curriculum for another three years in May 2024. Under the partnership agreement, UNHR directs the administration and curriculum implementation of the minor.

 

The Room Where It Happened

UNHR Executive Director and HRAM Steering Committee Co-Chair James Cavallaro attested that Wesleyan administration had formally informed him of their specific concerns in an email on Jan. 10. Administrators had previously expressed general worries regarding their partnership with UNHR in a Dec. 16 meeting that included Angle.

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nicole Stanton declined to comment on specific aspects of the contract, but noted that there have been conversations going back several months concerning the ongoing logistical, financial, and liability challenges regarding the relationship between UNHR and Wesleyan.

“Throughout the course of the partnership, we made agreements about things that were going to happen, and they have not happened,” Stanton said. “We do feel like [it has] put our students and the institution at risk, and we have not been able to solve these problems.”

According to Cavallaro, Wesleyan administrators noted the UNHR’s lack of communication regarding the program’s fieldwork locations during the 2024 Fall semester, as well as failure to perform background checks on external UNHR supervisors, but the program had articulated their intention to settle the concerns.

“I don’t understand what’s happening here,” Cavallaro said. “We were negotiating. [Stanton] raised concerns. It took three weeks to put them in writing to us, and when she raised the concerns, we immediately expressed our interest in resolving them as quickly as possible.”

Cavallaro stated that, in past semesters, UNHR had properly communicated these locations, and the core team of UNHR supervisors which were appointed as Wesleyan instructors had undergone required Wesleyan-required background checks, although some secondary supervisors, such as local contacts for programming in foreign countries, had not.

“[Wesleyan] pulled the rug out from under us,” Cavallaro said. “They’re minor fixes. We’ve been in a relationship for years.”

Cavallaro told The Argus that he had delivered Stanton a written proposal addressing these concerns on Jan. 13 2025, asking how to initiate the Wesleyan background check process and providing greater administrative communication with Wesleyan. He has not yet received a response.

UNHR also requested a formal decision from Stanton and Dean of the Social Sciences Mary-Jane Rubenstein on the status of the partnership. As of Friday, Jan. 31 2025, the parties have not reached a resolution. Stanton acknowledged the lack of a concrete plan regarding the future of a hypothetical HRAM without a partnership with UNHR.

“There’s some expertise we don’t have in-house,” Stanton said. “I would want to go to the faculty who developed the minor and see what they think.”

Angle and Stanton plan to have a meeting on Monday, Feb. 3, for further conversation on UNHR’s partnership with Wesleyan.

Student Advocacy and Mobilization

Beginning on Thursday, Jan. 23, HRAM students and other student activists mobilized in support of protecting the partnership. Students conducted an informal organizational session at the Human Rights House on Saturday, Jan. 25, concluding with a call for students to participate in substantive action items in the following days.

“I came to Wesleyan…primarily because they offered [HRAM],” Zain Punjwani ’26 said.  “I completed my coursework with the core required courses for the minor last year, and to even just see it at risk is just awful, because it played such an important part in shaping my views.”

Students met with Stanton both during and outside of her office hours, waiting for the opportunity to discuss the decision. Paul Quach ’26, Andrea Herrera ’27, and Punjwani, all of whom serve as senators on the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), sponsored Resolution 3.46: Protecting the Existence of the University Network for Human Rights’ Human Rights Advocacy Program at Wesleyan University. The resolution highlighted the unique nature of HRAM as the only program of its kind in the United States, providing law school-quality human rights training to undergraduate students. The proposal also reiterated the rationale behind the EPC’s decision to renew the program.

In the Sunday, Jan. 26 WSA meeting, over a dozen students spoke in support of the resolution, testifying to the impact HRAM had on them. A frequently raised point was that UNHR was crucial to HRAM, and that the minor could not exist in its current state without the partnership.

Several students from partner universities participating in HRAM’s Advocacy and Community-based Training Semester (ACTS)—a program focusing on human rights fact-finding, documentation, and advocacy under UNHR supervision—testified that the ongoing uncertainty around the partnership has deterred applications to ACTS in their home schools.

“[ACTS] nearly convinced me to transfer to Wesleyan for my last semester,” Wellesley College student and ACTS participant Emma Cohen wrote in an email to The Argus. “The reason this program changed my life, and the thing that makes it all that it is, are UNHR staff members.”

The WSA unanimously voted to approve Resolution 3.46 and opened the “Referendum on Protecting the Partnership Between the University Network for Human Rights and the Human Rights Advocacy Minor at Wesleyan” on Jan. 26. The referendum will be open and accessible for Wesleyan students to vote on until Sunday, Feb. 2. 

Student organizers created an Instagram account, @save_human_rights_at_wesleyan, intended to highlight key issues of discontent, including the argument that HRAM cannot exist without UNHR, and to share updates about the WSA referendum.

“The overwhelming student support…[has been] tremendously moving…whatever happens here, I feel totally validated,” Cavallaro said. 

Responding to the breadth of student organization, Stanton sent an email on Wednesday, Jan. 29 to HRAM minors, inviting students to an open session with herself and Rubenstein on Wednesday, Feb. 19.

HRAM minor Kaori Sakurai ’25 responded to Stanton on behalf of her fellow UNHR students.

“Prolonging the uncertainty around this issue is causing considerable damage to the existing human rights programming,” Sakurai wrote. “This disruption to enrollment puts the future of this program in serious jeopardy. As the ACTS program provides a major source of funding for UNHR Human Rights program, losing the ACTS program would seriously damage the financial viability of the minor.”

According to Roth, Wesleyan has not yet made a formal decision on the future of the partnership. Stanton similarly reiterated that the academic minor, as approved by the EPC, will continue. 

“We remain committed to the study of human rights at Wesleyan, the Human Rights minor, [and] making sure students get the most wonderful, rich, safe experience that we can provide,” Stanton said. “At this moment in time, I cannot imagine a more important field of study than human rights.” 

Janhavi Munde can be reached at jmunde@wesleyan.edu.

Thomas Lyons can be reached at trlyons@wesleyan.edu.