The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) is accepting applications for its Human Rights Scholars program. All currently enrolled NYU Law students are eligible to apply. The program offers the opportunity for students to contribute to the CHRGJ’s activities as research assistants, join the CHRGJ’s human rights community, and undertake independent writing projects under the guidance of CHRGJ faculty and staff.
Research Assistance
Human Rights Scholars will work with CHRGJ faculty and staff to further the Center’s research agenda and to support the design and implementation of the Center’s projects, workshops, and other programming. Each Human Rights Scholar will be assigned a primary supervisor from among CHRGJ faculty or staff.
Research undertaken for the Center will be compensated at $15.00/hour or undertaken for RA academic credit (please note that 1L students are ineligible to be RAs for credit). Work will be assigned on an as-needed basis. Workloads will vary by supervisor, but all applicants should be prepared to contribute a minimum of 60 hours per semester with a maximum of 20 hours per week of RA assistance.
The Center houses the Global Justice Clinic and many esteemed human rights experts, including the former UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence. Center faculty and staff will be working across a diverse range of issues (explore CHRGJ’s website for project descriptions), including:
- Caribbean Climate Justice Initiative
- 2 positions available
- Paid or for credit
- Preferred qualifications:
- Research experience
- French, Haitian Kreyol, or Spanish language skills
- Familiarity with climate and environmental justice issues
- Human Rights and Privatization Project
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Preferred qualifications:
- Interest in and/or experience working on the impact of privatization and financialization on human rights
- Legal Empowerment and Access to Justice
- 1-2 positions available
- For credit
- Preferred qualifications: Spanish or French language skills
- Prevention Project
- Constitutional & Legal Tools – the work stream is finalizing a policy brief on guarantor institutions, alongside conducting global research on opposition rights and powers.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- State Capture: the work stream is finalizing a report on the prevention of state capture, including a series of case studies to identify patterns of state capture in diverse regions of the world, which need to be translated into UN and local languages
- 6 positions available
- Paid or for credit
- Language skills: We are looking for students who are fluent/native speakers in the following languages to assist with translating state capture case studies:
- Arabic
- French
- Akan Twi (Ghana)
- Afrikaans – Zulu – Xhosa (South Africa)
- Bantu (Mozambique)
- Sinhala – Tamil (Sri Lanka)
- Land & Housing: this new workstream will focus on threats posed to Land & Housing Rights by the commercialization of land and housing and the concomitant land tenure insecurities.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Security: this workstream is finalizing a report on policing. In addition, it has started exploring the preventive potential of dispersed, multi-layered civilian oversight mechanisms over the armed forces, as well as the place of armed forces as preventative actors and as violators in themselves.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Civil Society: the workstream aims to identify positive interventions that empower civil society’s capacity for prevention. It is conducting a global study to learn best practices for strengthening civil society networks through a survey, which will be disseminated to civil society actors around the world, with the results analyzed in a final report.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Health and Human Rights: this new workstream will focus on best and next practices for rights-based approaches to health as well as threats to the realization of health rights as risk factors for atrocity. The team will explore individual, interpersonal, group, societal, and structural barriers and challenges to the realization of the right to health equally and without discrimination.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Environment and Human Rights: this new workstream will focus on the prevention of grave human rights violations relating to the environment and climate change.
- 1 position available
- Paid or for credit
- Technology, human rights, and environmental justice
- 2 positions available
- For credit
- Required qualifications:
- Excellent research, analytical, and writing skills
- Knowledge of, or interest in, the environmental implications of digitalization and human rights concerns
- Wellbeing and Resilience
- 1-2 positions available
- For credit
- Preferred qualifications: Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, or Spanish language skills would be helpful, but far from required
Community
Human Rights Scholars will be integrated into CHRGJ’s community of staff, faculty, visiting scholars, and students through invitations to its social events, research workshops, and expert convenings.
Independent Writing
Students who are also interested in working on their own academic research projects are strongly encouraged to apply. Human Rights Scholars will benefit from guidance and feedback from CHRGJ faculty and staff. At the discretion of the supervisor, earning academic credit may be an option through NYU’s Directed Research program or through enrollment in a course with a writing component taught by CHRGJ faculty. Scholars writing papers will be encouraged to submit papers to CHRGJ and IILJ’s annual Emerging Human Rights Scholarship Conference, a forum that provides students with the unique opportunity to receive detailed feedback from experts and peers in order to prepare work of publishable quality.
Qualifications
- Enrolled NYU law student in any degree program (JD, LLM, JSD)
- Demonstrated commitment to human rights and social justice
- Excellent research and writing skills
- Ability to work independently in a professional environment
- Demonstrated potential for engaged and rigorous scholarship or applied research
Application Instructions
Applications must be submitted via this form no later than noon on Wednesday, September 21. However, applications are considered on a rolling basis, so students are encouraged to apply as soon as possible.
Required supplemental application materials include:
- statement addressing qualifications and specific research interests (maximum 500 words)
- CV
- unofficial transcript from NYU Law (even if this is your first semester)
- English-language writing sample (10 pages max, excerpts acceptable)
We encourage applications from persons of color, LGBTQI persons, women, veterans, and persons with disabilities. NYU is an equal opportunity employer. EOE/AA/Minorities/Females/Vet/Disabled/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity.
