We aim to link the Young Initiative’s theoretical and practical work to global academic and policy conversations.
Campus Workshops
In the 2019-20 academic year, we hosted the Cross-Cutting Approaches to Human Rights workshop. This brought together 24 leading scholars and practitioners from around the world to focus on how to best re-conceptualize human rights so they can better inform struggles against rising global/local nationalisms. Conversations had a particular focus on recognizing how violations of economic rights are an essential dimension for understanding the structural exclusions that underlie our current global tumult.
The “Cross-Cutting Global Conversations on Human Rights: Interdisciplinarity, Intersectionality, and Indivisibility” workshop featured leading human rights scholars and practitioners from a remarkably broad range of disciplines, geographic positions, and points of view. This diversity brought new insights to controversial issues in human rights scholarship and will pave the way for upcoming publications from workshop participants.
This workshop is currently being developed into a book collection on open human rights. We are excited to tie our engaging workshop discussions into a collection for human rights scholars around the world.
Following the “Cross-cutting Global Conversations on Human Rights" conference, scholars discuss the intersections of the sub-state and global levels and question how grassroots activism and local institutions can counteract global xenophobia through the language of international rights norms.
Academic Work & Partnerships
The Young Initiative is dedicated to engaging students and faculty with topics related to Global Political Economy through workshops and the annual United Nations Week. We work with scholars around the world to bring interdisciplinary topics to Occidental’s campus. Faculty are encouraged to pursue academic partnerships that contribute to alternatives to the economic status quo. Our U.N. Week is led by dedicated students who bring topics of sustainable development to Oxy’s campus.