The Loundy Center

With a $100,000 gift from alumnus Joseph Loundy, Roosevelt University will establish the Joseph Loundy Human Rights Project, a new program in which students will conduct comparative research on the way that on human rights are promoted in different national contexts, and to then use that research to generate advocacy strategies for promoting human rights and social justice in Chicago.

"We will address problems that not only are present in a variety of cities across the globe, but that also provide students an opportunity to have a visible effect on the communities around them," said Bethany Barratt, associate professor of political science, who is director of the project. Possible inaugural issue areas include protecting rights of immigrant communities under new security regulations, promoting human rights perspectives in secondary education, and fostering respect for human rights in the criminal justice system.

One of the first elements of the project will be a course held in the spring 2009 semester in collaboration with Roosevelt’s Scholars Program. After studying human rights problems and current approaches to them here in Chicago, half of the class participants will travel to Jerusalem and the other half to London during spring break to experience human rights advocacy activity in those cities. The students will use this comparative experience to analyze what has worked where, and why, and thus to predict the most likely effective solutions here in Chicago. Summer internships will allow students to work on implementing their proposals, according to Barratt.

"I want to thank Mr. Loundy for this generous and timely gift," said Roosevelt University President Chuck Middleton. "The Loundy Human Rights Project typifies Roosevelt’s mission of social justice. Students engaged in transformational learning often see the world in new ways and fundamentally change as people."