On Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in an email sent to all students participating in the Human Rights Advocacy Minor (HRAM), University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) Administrative Intern Kaori Sakurai ’25 announced that the University would not renew its partnership for the 2025–26 academic year.
While the UNHR has not publicly commented on the status of the partnership, the claim has been substantiated by multiple individuals associated with UNHR Community Engagement and Outreach Coordinator Kenny Morris and several HRAM students. These include Sakurai and HRAM Teaching Assistant Maggie Brown ’26. Morris announced the partnership’s non-renewal on Wednesday, April 30, 2025.
“UNHR’s contract with Wesleyan is ending June 30th,” Morris wrote in a message to The Argus. “Wesleyan has not made plans to renew our contract, to my understanding.”
The University and UNHR’s partnership began with a three-year contract signed in 2021, creating the Human Rights Advocacy Minor. The UNHR, which was co-founded by Professor of the Practice at the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life Jim Cavallaro, sought to offer students first-hand experience in the study of human rights advocacy by combining on-campus academics with the opportunity to conduct fieldwork through domestic and international travel.
Additionally, through the Advocacy and Community-based Training Semester (ACTS) program, the partnership allowed students from partner institutions to study at the University for a semester. ACTS provided the University with a crucial source of revenue through the visiting students’ tuition.
In 2024, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) renewed the contract between the University and the UNHR for another three years, taking a customary administrative step in support of a continuing partnership.
However, according to Human Rights Advocacy Minor Co-Chair and Professor of Philosophy Stephen Angle, in an informal meeting on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025, President Michael Roth ’78 communicated a decision to end the relationship with UNHR. In an email sent to The Argus, Roth denied that any formal decision had been made. Following Roth’s comments, the University continuously argued that the partnership had faced unspecified legal, financial, and communication problems, most of which were not visible to students participating in the minor.
According to Cavallaro, in private meetings, the University pointed to 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, as problems with their relationship. The University did not confirm his claims.
Cavallaro said that the University had informed him of the specific concerns in an email on Friday, Jan. 10. Additionally, he claimed the University had previously expressed worry regarding the partnership in a Monday, Dec. 16, 2024 meeting. While the University claimed that the partnership presented substantial contractual and safety-related problems, Cavallaro argued that the issues were minor and reparable.
Sakurai said that UNHR had addressed the issues presented by the University.
“These issues were resolved in a matter of weeks after they were raised,” Sakurai wrote. “Nonetheless, Wesleyan administrators continued to frame these issues as irreconcilable.”
Human Rights Advocacy minors pointed to the University’s ambiguity around specific problems with the partnership as proof of a lack of substance. Roth’s alleged statement also faced fierce backlash from the broader University community.
On Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025, three members of 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, in addition to expressing the senators’ support for a continued partnership, reiterated the rationale behind the EPC’s decision to renew the program. The WSA passed the resolution unanimously.
“[The minor has] supported over 30 student fact-finding advocacy projects, trained over 350 students through real-life adapted simulations, partnered with over 45 organizations, and produced over 30 published reports and studies on human rights,” the resolution read. “The [contract renewal process] went through the correct [EPC] protocols, including an initial faculty vote.”
Additionally, the WSA held a campus-wide referendum to gauge the student body’s support for the partnership. The referendum, which was titled “Protecting the Partnership Between the University Network for Human Rights and the Human Rights Advocacy Minor at Wesleyan,” passed overwhelmingly. In an email sent on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, the WSA announced that 97% of the 812 voting students had voted in favor of continuing the partnership.
Following the resolution and referendum, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nicole Stanton indicated that while the University would support the continuation of the HRAM, the referendum would not impact its consideration of a future partnership with UNHR.
“I’ve said from the beginning that we are committed to protecting the Human Rights Advocacy minor,” Stanton said in an interview with The Argus. “There are legal and financial problems in the relationship between UNHR and Wesleyan University that have not been resolved. Those have to be resolved in a way that results in a safe and sustainable program correct for our students.”
This back-and-forth culminated in an event that was billed in an email to all HRAM students as an “open conversation” hosted by Stanton and Dean of the Social Sciences Mary-Jane Rubenstein on Wednesday, Feb. 19. However, a reporter from The Argus was asked to leave by Stanton, who said that the event was open only to Human Rights Advocacy minors.
On April 14, UNHR held their own information session. UNHR made it clear that the event would only be open to members of the minor.
In Brown’s email announcing the end of the partnership, she argued that the UNHR partnership presented an inimitable opportunity to University students.
“UNHR has trained scores of Wesleyan students in interdisciplinary human rights advocacy, through a unique combination of coursework in international human rights law, intensive training, and fieldwork at the UN and with disenfranchised communities in over 20 countries,” Brown wrote. “There is no analog for this experience. No other undergraduate program of this kind exists in the US.”
If the partnership ends on June 30, the minor will continue to exist without UNHR’s infrastructure.
Miles Pinsof-Berlowitz can be reached at mpinsofberlo@wesleyan.edu.
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