The Carr Center provides HKS students with funding opportunities, support for student-led events and initiatives, research and applied learning experiences, skills workshops, and other enriching opportunities. Learn more about available resources and get involved.
Since its founding in 1999, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School has been a leading research center that has focused on some of the most intractable challenges facing the world, including genocide, torture, violence against women, and human trafficking. The Center was founded by director Michael Ignatieff, currently President of Central European University, and Executive Director Samantha Power, who was later U.S. Ambassador to the UN.
In celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human...
From exploring the ethics of artificial intelligence to identifying underlying sources of systemic discrimination, Justice Matters Podcast investigates a wide array of human rights issues at home and abroad. Join our host, Sushma Raman, as she and our guests confront, challenge, and explore human rights matters with a multidisciplinary lens.
While problems of police brutality and broader challenges of systemic racism are ingrained in the nation’s DNA, more recent phenomena—such as the use of technology to document said violence, the rise of social movements and digital campaigns to advocate for Black lives, and the growth of intersectionality in civil society amongst immigrant rights, queer liberation, and racial justice movements—have catapulted these issues to the fore.
As we continue the centuries-long journey of tackling racial injustice in the United States, the Carr Center for Human Rights Racial...
Examining how technological advancements affect the future of human rights.
While recognizing the enormous progress that societies have made since the establishment of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, technological advancements have inevitably profound implications for the human rights framework.
From a practical perspective, technology can help move the human rights agenda forward. For instance, the use of satellite data can monitor the flow of displaced people; artificial intelligence can assist...
Producing and disseminating knowledge on nonviolent action
The Nonviolent Action Lab produces and disseminates up-to-date knowledge on nonviolent action, how it works, and global trends in success and failure. The world is facing numerous crises that demand urgent and effective nonviolent action. Movements worldwide are fighting global inaction on climate change, discrimination against refugee and immigrant communities fleeing war and hardship, and rising global inequality. At the same time, the very institution of democracy is under threat. Over...
What are the rights and responsibilities that define the relationship of people to the government, and to each other?
In contrast to nations rooted in the blood ties of their people, the United States is built on a belief that the relationship of citizens to their government and to each other should be defined by rights and responsibilities. In the Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln expressed a vision of the United States as “a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all [people] are created equal.” ...
Addressing current human rights concerns at local, state, and international levels
The Carr Center’s work includes a range of special initiatives focused on critical and compelling human rights concerns, including migration, trafficking, torture, transitional justice, humanitarian crises, LGBTQ rights, corruption, and shrinking civil society space. These initiatives are responsive to current events and are reflected in the work of our fellows, student experiential learning and funding, conferences and seminars, and the...
