Who We Are
The Center for the Advancement of Human Rights is an interdisciplinary, non-partisan human rights center located at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida USA. Established in 2000, the Center has the mandate of (1) creating human rights courses throughout FSU's many colleges and departments; (2) sponsoring FSU students at home and abroad for human rights internships; and (3) supporting human rights advocates and non-governmental organizations throughout the world.
Human Rights Courses at FSU
To date, the Center has sponsored the creation of over 30 human rights classes at both the graduate and undergraduate levels at FSU. These include courses in Law, Religious Studies, Political Science, Film, Criminology, Modern Languages, English Literature, Education, Geography, and Public Policy. The Center has also sponsored a Faculty Human Rights Seminar in which FSU professors meet monthly to discuss human rights readings drawing on the expertise of their respective disciplines.
FSU Human Rights Internships
Fostering human rights advocacy skills among FSU students is an important goal for the Center. Each year the Center sponsors 15-20 students from around the university for fully-paid human rights internships in Florida, the U.S., and overseas. Such placements abroad have included work with the International Bar Association's Human Rights Center in London; participation in efforts to counter human trafficking in Albania, Thailand, and Nepal; service in refugee centers in Spain and Southeast Asia; work with child victims of labor trafficking in India; and assisting women's human rights groups in Lebanon. In the United States FSU students have done refugee and political asylum advocacy, served at torture victim treatment centers, assisted at centers for battered women, and worked with the New York-based Innocence Project to investigate how DNA evidence might exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners.
Human Rights Projects
Consistent with its goal of supporting human rights advocates and nongovernmental groups, the Center has engaged in a wide variety of human rights projects. These include The FSU Human Trafficking Project (a statewide initiative aimed at countering human trafficking in Florida); the Liberty in the Balance Project (a statewide initiative examining how post 9-11 anti-terrorism measures can be reconciled with civil liberties and human rights); and the Immigrant Rights Project (pro bono legal assistance for victims of torture, immigrant women who have suffered gender-based violence, and persons seeking political asylum).
The Center is also a member of the International Human Rights Education Consortium, an association of university-based human rights centers worldwide that work closely with non-governmental human rights groups and advocates.
Advancing Human Rights Book Series
The Center Distinguished Scholar Sumner "Barney" Twiss and the Center Executive Director Terry Coonan are Co-Editors along with Professor John Kelsay of the FSU Religious Studies Department of a new book series published by Georgetown University Press entitled Advancing Human Rights. The series is an interdisciplinary and comparative treatment of international human rights topics, including the analysis of human rights and ethical inquiry, human rights and humanitarian law, and human rights and criminal justice.
Our Staff
FSU Center for the Advancement of Human Rights
You may contact Rule of Law and Cuba through this e-mail address: ruleoflawandcuba@hotmail.com
Terry Coonan serves as the Executive Director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, and an Associate Professor in the FSU Criminology School. He did grassroots human rights work in Chile and Central America in the 1980s and later served with the UN Human Rights Sub-commission, the UN High Commission for Refugees, and the U.S. Justice Department through the Honors Program. He was an Urban Morgan Human Rights Fellow at the University of Cincinnati Law School, where he served as Articles Editor of the Cincinnati Law Review and Managing Editor of The Human Rights Quarterly. He has litigated immigration and asylum cases nationwide, and teaches courses in Immigration & Refugee Law at the FSU Law School. He also teaches human rights courses in the Criminology and Film Schools at FSU.
Sumner "Barney" Twiss serves as the first Distinguished Scholar of Human Rights at FSU. A Yale graduate and longtime member of the Religious Studies Department at Brown University, Dr. Twiss has been recognized internationally for writing that he has done in the area of ethics and human rights. He joined the FSU faculty in June 2001, and has a joint appointment between the Human Rights Center and the Religious Studies Department. He teaches courses in Confucianism, Human Rights & Globalization, and Crimes Against Humanity. He also convenes the FSU Faculty Seminar on Human Rights.
Vania Llovera is the Program Assistant for the Center. A native of El Salvador, she graduated from FSU with a Bachelor's Degree in Education. She is currently pursuing a Master's Degree in ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) with certification in Special Education.
Robin Hassler Thompson is the Program Director for the Center's Victims of Human Trafficking Project. An attorney by training, she has over two decades of nationwide legal experience in the domestic violence field. She has served as the Executive Director of the Florida Governor's Task Force on Domestic & Sexual Violence, and consults regularly for the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Family Violence Prevention Fund.
Mark Schlakman is the Program Director for the Center's Liberty in the Balance Project and also serves as an adviser for the Caribbean Law Institute at the College of Law. A graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Miami, he has served as special counsel to Florida Governor Lawton Chiles; a senior advisor to the White House Special Envoy for the Americas; a foreign affairs officer for the U.S. Department of State; a special assistant to the Commander of the U.S. Southern Command; and as a special advisor to U.S. Senator Bob Graham (FL).
School of Information Studies - Web Development and Design Learning Lab
Anthony Chow holds a research associate faculty line and is the Director of User Services & Instructional Technology for the School of Information Studies. He also holds two additional appointments as the Director of the Usability Center and the Director of the Museum Lab Project. Anthony was born and raised locally in Tallahassee and is married to his high school sweetheart Theresa. They have three children, Alex, Maegan, and Emma. He earned his bachelor's degree from San Francisco State in developmental psychology (1992) and his master's of science degree in Educational Psychology from FSU (1998) specializing in learning and cognition.
Jordan Roher is an graduate student in the School of Information Studies at Florida State. He has developed several web-based applications for the school to track tech support requests. Jordan has a strong interest in Java programming, user interface issues, and graphic design.