FIRE's Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus

by David French

College and university campuses remain one of the only forums in which the rights of students of faith are regularly curtailed. The ease with which students are denied the right to associate freely among themselves, even in matters of conscience and religion, is profoundly disturbing, as is most students' inability to expose such denials as fundamentally unjust. FIRE’s Guide to Religious Liberty on Campusprovides a history of the struggle for religious liberty and explains how the legal and moral arguments for religious liberty apply differentially on public and private campuses. This Guide also answers pertinent questions such as:

1. What is the modern history and current status of the United States Supreme Court's view of the “free exercise of religion” and of “freedom of association”? How do these concepts apply to student liberty on my college or university campus?
2. What arguments on behalf of religious liberty and the rights of conscience pertain to a private or sectarian institution?
3. What legal and moral arguments may be made against the imposition of double standards by academic administrators in a variety of areas of campus life, including religious freedom?

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Welcome to FIRE’s Spotlight: The Campus Freedom Resource, where you will find comprehensive information on the state of liberty on America’s campuses. Use FIRE’s Spotlight to find pages for individual academic institutions, which contain relevant links to our research of speech codes, case materials from FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program, media coverage of FIRE’s work, and entries from FIRE’s blog.

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This is the second part of the series "Focus Human Rights". It deals with the second dimension of the Human Rights System: The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Additionally, it explains women's rights and shows how NGOs in the Human Rights sector work.

The series consists of an overview clip and a specific clip about each of the three dimensions of Human Rights.

Check out the other "Focus Human Rights" clips for further information about the topic.

By Jan Künzl and Jörn Barkemeyer

The Born2Fly Project to stop child trafficking is a strategic community awareness campaign that educates at-risk children and their parents about the dangers of child trafficking. A digital library of anti-trafficking resources for children. 

Freedom Acts: Forced Labor Adam's story of how he was exploited for forced labor in Northern Ireland

Freedom Acts: Grooming  Alisha's story of how she was groomed for sexual exploitation as a teenager in Northern Ireland

Freedom Acts: Sexual Exploitation Anna's story of how she was tricked and forced into sexual exploitation in Northern Ireland

Freedom Acts: Conclusion The end of Adam, Alisha, and Anna's stories along with more information

Journey to Freedom True stories of two men—21st-century Cambodian Vannak Prum and 19th-century American Solomon Northup—who were sold into slavery more than 150 years apart, and the abolitionists who fight to free slaves.

Warning to Young Women in China: Video in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles; a good warning to young women everywhere, not just in China. 

Backstory: MTV's Interactive Anti-Slavery Campaign:  Interactive videos that show youth how poor choices can lead to being trafficked.  Note: Backstory doesn't play in all browsers; it worked better for us in Safari than in Firefox. 

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First part of the series "Focus Human Rights". It deals with Civil and Political Rights, with Human Rights violations and the history of Human Rights.

This film marks the start of the project "Focus Human Rights". The series will consist of an overview clip and of one clip about each of the three dimensions of Human Rights.

The first dimension involves the Political and Civil Rights, the second dimension deals with the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the third dimension consists of the Collective Rights.

In addition, a number of cross-cutting issues are explained. For example: the history of Human Rights, the role of non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, or the problems of the Human Rights system.

Together, the overview clip and the three specific clips provide a profound knowledge about the topic Human Rights.

By Jan Künzl und Jörn Barkemeyer

The AFSC Los Angeles Peace Education Program offers Human Rights resources, training and professional development for K-12 educators.  Each year, our office facilitates a Human Rights Education workshop for Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) teachers through the United Teachers of Los Angeles salary-point system.  

The workshop is designed to build teachers' fundamental knowledge and understanding of human rights.  Teachers in the two-day workshop explore the global, national and local dimensions of human rights issues.  The workshop also uses case studies from Los Angeles to understand how human rights abuses affect local communities.  Some of the human rights issues addressed in the workshop include:

• Environmental Sustainability
• Economic Justice
• Genocide
• The Media
• Child Soldiers and Youth in the Military
• Human Trafficking

In the workshop, teachers are provided with materials and assistance in developing their own lesson plans to strengthen content competence and to develop grade and subject-appropriate curriculum.  It is through the workshop that teachers become better equipped to encourage tolerance and peace building among their students and to help them appreciate the critical role human rights plays in the everyday lives of people here and elsewhere in the world.

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"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." This is what it says in the very first Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The idea of Human Rights is one of the most important fundaments of human co-existence. At the same time human rights are subject to fierce debates and Human Rights violations are common all over the world.
But what exactly are Human Rights? Who is responsible for protecting them? And do they really apply to all people?

This is the first part of the series "Focus Human Rights". It consists of this overview clip an three more specific clips for each of the three dimensions of Human Rights

Education a Human Right:  This video was created by the American Friends Service Eommittee, PA program's Racial Justice Through Human Rights group together with the Youth Media Advocacy Project. The youth's deep concern for education and the deficiency of the schools led them to want to raise awareness in the community about the right to a good education.

View the video on American Friends Service Committee

 "If I Had A Trillion Dollars" Youth Film Festival:  Youth from AFSC in Pittsburgh's Racial Justice Through Human Rights Program explain how they would use a trillion dollars to help their respective communities, quoting many articles of the UDHR.   

View the video on American Friends Service Committee

DC kicks off year of human rights learning:  This year, the city council kicked off “DC Year of Human Rights Learning” on Dec. 10, calling on the American Friends Service Committee and the Washington, D.C. public schools to continue to promote the importance of educated residents about human rights.

Since passing its Human Rights City resolution, Washington has been able to reach out to more than 150 students each year through AFSC, which focuses on peace and economic justice through its Washington program.

Jean-Louis Peta Ikambana, the program’s director, explains that students involved with the program get “more than just a human rights class.”  

“The project strives to achieve universal commitment to the dignity and worth of each human person by working with D.C. Public Schools students to increase their knowledge and understanding of human rights, as a way to create a culture of long lasting peace in D.C.,” he says.

The project’s main goals are to increase human rights knowledge, to foster critical thinking, and to empower youth to become agents for peace and social change.

The curriculum uses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a foundation. A survey of 89 students from seven public and private schools in 2008 found that only two had even heard of the universal declaration, but every respondent indicated interest in learning more about human rights.

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In the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition, law students from all over Africa
argue a hypothetical human rights case as if they are doing so in the African Court on
Human and Peoples' Rights.

In its first 20 years, 131 universities from 49 African countries have participated.

Participants also attend a seminar or course on international human rights law and go on a one-day excursion to visit a place of national interest in the host country. The Competition lasts six days and is held in a different country each year.

Judges in the preliminary rounds are lecturers from the participating universities. The best
teams advance to the final round where they merge to form two new combined teams
with English, French and Portuguese-speaking students on each side. The judges in the final round are international human rights lawyers of the highest standing and simultaneous
translation is provided.

The Moot is the largest annual gathering of students and lecturers of law on the continent,
and one of the premier events on the African human rights calendar.

There is arguably no educational event at the university level in Africa which has done
more to make the African human rights system better known -- and which has a wider
reach and a broader scope -- than the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition.

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