According to University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) senior faculty, they have still not received a formal decision from Wesleyan University on whether their partnership will continue.

UNHR is the operating organization that implements the Human Rights Advocacy Minor’s (HRAM) curriculum and its practical fieldwork. In late 2024, the University expressed contractual concerns regarding its relationship with UNHR, which is up for renewal at the end of the spring semester. UNHR has responded to the administrators’ concerns with a proposal.

However, according to HRAM Co-Chair and Professor of Philosophy Stephen Angle, President Michael Roth ’78 communicated in an informal meeting on Friday, Jan. 17, his decision to end the relationship with UNHR. In email communications with The Argus, Roth denied that any formal decision was made. In the following week, as students mobilized to protect the relationship, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nicole Stanton echoed this sentiment, adding that the University is committed to continuing the HRAM program with its key features intact.

Since receiving an email confirmation two weeks ago on Jan. 23, faculty and students have expressed frustration at continued delays and lack of communication from the administration regarding a formal decision on the partnership.

On Feb. 4, a Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) referendum titled “Protecting the Partnership Between the University Network for Human Rights and the Human Rights Advocacy Minor at Wesleyan” passed with 97% support out of a total of 812 votes.

Over the past week, student organizers mobilized strongly to publicize the referendum to the larger student body by utilizing social media and tabling at Usdan University Center. Student organizers hoped that the referendum’s positive results would urge the University to renew its three-year contract with UNHR.

“Despite this strong student support, we are concerned the University has not communicated with the UNHR transparently or engaged in meaningful negotiation,” WSA senator and sponsor of Resolution 3.46 on protecting the University’s human rights program Zain Punjwani ’26 said. “Until the university shows us through action that they are committed to negotiating with the UNHR in good faith, we remain committed to exploring all avenues of advocacy to ensure our support for this partnership is heard.”

While the administration has conveyed that the referendum result has strongly prompted them to formulate a solution, it will not affect any ultimate decision they have to make on the basis of contractual factors.

“There are two really significant legal and financial issues that make the relationship as it is now unsustainable,” Provost Stanton said. “Those are not things that students are a part of deciding or voting on, because they’re not liable. Those have to be resolved in a way that results in a safe and sustainable program correct for our students. So, regardless of any referendum, it’s our job to provide a safe and sustainable experience.”

Nevertheless, HRAM faculty leaders and Wesleyan University’s administrators have made some successful contact. On Monday, Feb. 3, Angle met with Stanton to discuss the future of the minor.

“I had a constructive meeting with Provost Stanton [on Feb. 3], and we’re continuing to work on achieving what she has said are her goals: maintaining the Human Rights Advocacy Minor with all of its key features intact,” Angle wrote in an email to The Argus. “There are several steps left, but I hope that within a week or two we’ll have worked out the details in a way that is satisfactory to all parties.”

On Tuesday, Feb. 4, in a regular faculty meeting, Stanton acknowledged that faculty members expressed interest in the ongoing decision-making process of the University’s partnership with UNHR and conveyed that the administration is open to faculty concerns. Provost Stanton reaffirmed her stance that the University’s current relationship with UNHR is unsustainable and that the administration is committed to figuring out a new path forward.

In an email to The Argus, John E. Andrus Professor of Government and Department Chair Mary Alice Haddad shared that many of her department’s students and faculty have been involved in the work of the UNHR, which has expanded the government curriculum’s scope beyond what would be possible with just the regular faculty’s support.

“I had not realized that the contract with UNHR was up for renewal,” Haddad wrote. “Since I’m Chair of a unit with such close contact with UNHR, it would have been nice if I had been contacted earlier to be part of the conversations about how to craft a new, improved relationship with them.”

Student organizers and student members of Wesleyan University’s Educational Policy Committee (EPC) conveyed that they viewed faculty interest as an avenue to encourage transparent University communication regarding the future of the partnership, the HRAM program, and general decisions made by administrators.

According to UNHR Director of Programs and Senior Clinical Supervisor Tamar Hayrikyan, witnessing faculty interest and support has been reassuring to UNHR.

“I see individual faculty members finding ways to be kind of an interface between us and the administration in a kind of sincere, concerned way, almost helping to compensate for the fact that we aren’t really getting that direct interface with the administration,” Hayrikyan wrote in an email to The Argus.

For current students in the HRAM and prospective students in the introductory class titled “Human Rights Standards” (CSPL 228), the uncertain nature of the partnership is impacting their ongoing and potential experiences in the minor.

As university administration works on formulating and delivering an official decision on its partnership with UNHR, the Advocacy and Community-based Training Semester (ACTS) program—through which students from partner institutions study human rights fact-finding, documentation, and advocacy under UNHR supervision—faces a particularly precarious situation. A critical part of the HRAM and key contractual point in UNHR and the University’s partnership, the ACTS program helps achieve a cost-neutral goal for the partnership. Any hindrance to such a goal due to the lack of clarity on the program’s status can put UNHR in non-compliance with the contract.

Hayrikyan expressed the organization’s concerns about the current status of the ACTS program.

“The absence of a clear decision on the timeline for phasing out this partnership, or whether or not it will be phased out at all is critical for the ACTS program,” Hayrikyan said.

Hayrikyan expressed that currently, the ACTS program is designed to be ramped up over each semester, with increased numbers of students from other universities pursuing the human rights program at Wesleyan. According to her assessment based on the expressions of interest and applications UNHR has received, the ACTS program is at an inflection point, with a significant increase in enrollment this coming semester. Without a clear decision in these coming months, UNHR’s recruitment of students from other universities is severely compromised.

“We will lose that momentum,” Hayrikyan said. “We are potentially already losing that momentum because we have to hold off on recruitment–we don’t know if there will be a WesACTS program next year.”

Stanton has hinted that the ACTS program will be changed, but has also added that the extent of changes falls beyond her scope. The future of HRAM is not be a unilateral decision anyone in Academic Affairs could make but instead will involve working with the HRAM’s faculty advisory board.

UNHR administrators expressed that would like to see more support from the University in administering the ACTS program.

“The communication between Wesleyan and partner universities has not been ideal,” Hayrikyan wrote in an email to the Argus. “As a result, UNHR has had to fill gaps and fulfill student needs, like making sure they get their financial aid transferred, that they get registered and set up in Wesleyan’s system in time for the start of classes, and that housing, transfer of credits, and so on, all work out. So I hope that among those changes that would happen to the ACTS program is an improvement in the efficiency of communication and administrative procedures between Wesleyan and partner universities.”

Echoing this sentiment, UNHR Executive Director and HRAM Steering Committee Co-Chair Jim Cavallaro shared that additional assistance from Wesleyan for the ACTS program was among the items which UNHR wanted to renegotiate and had conveyed to the administration in Dec. 2024.

“This process has been very stressful for all of us at UNHR,” Cavallaro wrote in a message to the Argus. “The administration now says that they want to continue the Human Rights Advocacy Minor and the ACTS program with UNHR in some form. We look forward to negotiating with them, centering the interests of Wesleyan students and the communities that we serve.”

Nevertheless, Hayrikyan emphasized that UNHR continue to work amid uncertainty and negotiations that affect both their everyday work and personal lives.

“Every UNHR staff and faculty member is operating on three levels of reality simultaneously,” Hayrikyan said. “There is the one where just on a regular day without this, we’re constantly putting out fires and preparing people for stressful, challenging situations, whether they’re students, supervisors, teachers, communication staff, researchers—and that has not changed. The other plane of existence is planning; we’re all individuals who might lose our jobs, at least in the short term. Some of us live here, because of the partnership with Wesleyan. So there’s going to be an important upheaval in our personal lives because of this.”

At the same time, UNHR reaffirms its existence as an organization with connections and a vision beyond its contract with Wesleyan.

“And the third plane is, we’re mobilizing ourselves to think bigger than our partnership with Wesleyan,” Hayrikyan said. “This is a reminder that we are the University Network for Human Rights.”

Student organizers stressed that protection of UNHR as the HRAM’s key operator is at the heart of their mobilization.

“Transitioning to Wesleyan, I would not have had the same experience without the UNHR,” Williams College student and ACTS participant Savannah Slater ’26 said.

Reflecting on two weeks of organization—from communicating with the administration and passing a WSA resolution to encouraging votes for the referendum and spreading awareness on social media—student organizers convey that their work is not complete until transparent communications and negotiations between the University and UNHR come to fruition.

“I think the outpouring of support and the levels of mobilization we’ve achieved in such a short time is a testament to both how well this program has trained us to apply our skills to advocate for what we believe in, and also how much this program touched people from all corners of the campus,” student organizer Kaori Sakurai ’25 said.

Many students shared that their level of commitment to this mobilization is directly related to the importance of UNHR, as the UNHR provides a safe communal space for student activists and learners, beyond just an educational environment.

“The UNHR has done great support for a lot of identity clubs on-campus,”  HRAM student and WSA senator Andrea Herrera ’27, who also sponsored WSA’s Resolution 3.46, said. “This past year, the QuestBridge chapter needed a place to host their Thanksgiving event. And everything else was closed on campus…. And UNHR was willing to open its doors and [Cavallaro] even offered to buy us food with his own money to make sure that we were fed those days.”

Similarly, Slater spoke positively her experience in the ACTS program this past semester.

“Our classroom was a house,” Slater said, referring to the UNHR house at 101 High Street. “They [staff] stayed in the house so we could ask them questions whenever. It wasn’t just a space for learning, it was a space for community.”

Cognizant of the activism HRAM students have expressed supporting both the program, UNHR faculty stressed that all organization is resultant of the students’ own passions and demands.

“We teach human rights, we teach advocacy, we teach advocacy skills,” Hayrikyan said. “They use those skills. They look to us for advocacy advice as well. But they’re driving that ship, and it’s really important to me and I think to my colleagues that we let them drive that ship and let this be their fight.”

Despite initial communication problems, both UNHR and Wesleyan’s administration have expressed a strong commitment to preserving the HRAM as a positive experience for students, as their partnership contract undergoes negotiations. Students will be attending an open session with Stanton and Dean of the Social Sciences Mary-Jane Rubenstein at Beckham Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 19, to continue the ongoing conversations with a broader audience. HRAM students hope that administrators will reaffirm UNHR’s involvement in future operations of the minor.

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