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    PAE / SYPA Grants

    A number of HKS research centers and initiatives are interested in supporting students conducting their Policy Analysis Exercise (PAE) or Second Year Policy Analysis (SYPA) by providing small grants to help defray the cost of travel or research in the event the student's client is not able to provide funding. Applications will only be accepted through this process for PAE or SYPA funding.

    This funding is...

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    Student Opportunities

    Tap into opportunities at the Carr Center. 

    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. 

    PAE/ SYPA Grants

    The PAE and SYPA grants encourage second-year Master of Public Policy (MPP) candidates and Master of Public...

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    History & Approach

    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...

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    Support Our Work

    Help us make an impact.

    Make an impact by supporting the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.  The Center relies on support from individuals, foundations, and other philanthropic organizations in order to fulfill its mission. Grants and gifts can support both the Center as a whole, as well as specific research initiatives, programs, and fellowships. We thank you for your donation. 

    All gifts to the Harvard Kennedy School are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law.  The Harvard University Tax ID number is 04 2103580....

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    Trump Repeats Sad History on Immigration
    Kathryn Sikkink. 2/6/2017. “Trump Repeats Sad History on Immigration.” SC Times.Abstract
    Trump repeats sad history on immigration by Carr Center's Kathryn Sikkink.

    "When I was growing in St. Cloud in the 1960s and 1970s, I was already dimly aware that we were an immigrant community.

    In particular, I knew the parents and grandparents of many of my schoolmates had come from Germany because I was always in the homeroom full of the kids with German last names — the Schmidts, Schneiders, and Schwartzs. A number of these students came from poor farms outside town. They had to be up very early in the morning before school to help on the farm, before the long bus trip to school, and they came to homeroom, the first class of the day, smelling like the barn.

    If I could, I would apologize to those students today for my cruel remarks behind their backs; I, who had the luxury of spending too long every morning in the bathroom getting ready for school (according to my older brother).

    Many of the immigrant families in St. Cloud were Catholic, not only from Germany, but from Poland and Ireland. To this day, Census figures show that well over half of the individuals in the St. Cloud metropolitan area trace their ancestry to those three countries."

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    Law Restricts Trump on Torture - Unless He Ignores It
    Alberto Mora. 1/27/2017. “Law Restricts Trump on Torture - Unless He Ignores It.” Deutsche Welle.Abstract
    New article in Deutsche Welle featuring Carr Center Senior Fellow Alberto Mora.

    Donald Trump has threatened to make good on his campaign pledge to bring back waterboarding and forms of torture "a hell of a lot worse." That would violate international and US law, of course, but could he do it anyway?

    There was a sense that the US was coming to grips with its sins in December 2014, when the Senate completed its report on CIA torture under President George W. Bush in the years following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Months later, on June 16, 2015, when more than 20 Senate Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in a 78-21 vote to ban torture once and for all, there was a sense that the country was even moving forward. There would be no more "rectal feeding" of prisoners in the CIA's secret interrogation centers, no more threats to kill inmates' children or parents, no more people killed by hypothermia after spending hours forced into stress positions on frigid concrete. But 230 miles (385 kilometers) from the US Capitol on that very same June afternoon in 2015, a reality television host was kicking off a scorched-earth campaign at the New York City tower he had named for himself. And in 2017 the United States finds itself debating the limits of official cruelty all over again - though not necessarily the long-settled legality.

    "Torture under international law is categorically prohibited under all circumstances," said Alberto Mora, the Navy's general counsel during the Bush administration and a leading Defense Department opponent of the practices euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation." "This is what's called a nonderogable law, meaning that there is no set of circumstances or extenuating circumstance which would justify the application of torture."

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