June 14-25, 2021, NEW YORK
Summer human rights institute in new york city
June 14-25, 2021
Gain a comprehensive introduction to the theory and application of human rights law.
SHRI 2021 Application Period Opens December 1, 2020
Welcome to SHRI

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and concern for the health and safety of our community, the 2020 Summer Human Rights Institute at Fordham Law School has been cancelled. Information about the 2021 Summer Human Rights Institute can be found on our website. Please email shri@law.fordham.edu with any questions.

The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School is pleased to announce the 2021 Summer Human Rights Institute (SHRI), a two-week certificate program that will provide a comprehensive introduction to the theory and application of international human rights law, June 14-25, 2021. Designed for students and professionals from around the world, this immersive program enables individuals with limited time to gain an in-depth understanding of international human rights law and practice. Participants will take part in daily lectures and workshops with Fordham Law professors, supplemented by fieldwork and discussions with members of New York’s prominent human rights community. The program may also include field trips to the United Nations Headquarters and other local institutions.


Participants will earn Certificate in International Human Rights Law from the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School, New York, NY.
Business and Human Rights

Vulnerable
Groups

Civil and Political Rights

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Women and Children

International Justice

Faculty


  • Professor Martin S. Flaherty

    Professor Martin S. Flaherty is Leitner Family  Professor of Law and Co-Founding Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School.  He is also a Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and the New School in New York. Formerly chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee, Professor Flaherty founded the Rule of Law in Asia Program at the Leitner Center as well as co-founded the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, and has led or participated in human rights fact-finding trips in Northern Ireland, Turkey, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia, Kenya, and Romania. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author and editor of numerous books, chapters, and scholarly articles, in the fields of constitutional law and history, foreign affairs, and international human rights.

  • Professor Paolo Galizzi, Faculty Director

    SHRI Faculty Director Professor Paolo Galizzi is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Sustainable Development Legal Initiative (SDLI) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School. He joined Fordham from Imperial College, University of London, and previously held academic positions at Universities of Nottingham, Verona, and Milan. At the Leitner Center, Professor Galizzi directs the international development clinic, as well as a new clinic on corporate social responsibility that he began in 2012. Professor Galizzi’s research interests lie in international environmental law, human rights and the law of sustainable development, and he has published extensively in these areas.  He has also directed numerous legal research and capacity building projects in partnership with diverse public and private stakeholders in Sub-Saharan Africa.

  • Professor Gay McDougall

    Professor Gay McDougall is Distinguished Scholar-In-Residence at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School.  Prior to coming to Fordham, she served as the first United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues, as a member of the UN treaty body that oversees compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and as Executive Director of the international human rights NGO, Global Rights.  She was one of five international members of the South African Independent Electoral Commission that administered the first democratic, non-racial elections in that country.  For 14 years prior to that appointment, she had served as Director of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she worked to secure the release of thousands of political prisoners.

  • Professor Catherine Powell

    Professor Catherine Powell is Associate Professor of Law and Director of the International Law and Constitution Initiative at Fordham Law School, where she teaches international law, human rights, and constitutional law. She is also a fellow in the Women and Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Powell took a leave from academia from 2009–2012 to serve on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff and on the National Security Staff as director for human rights in the Obama administration. She was founding director of both the Human Rights Institute and Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, where she was a clinical professor from 1998–2002.  In addition to previously serving on the board of Human Rights Watch, she has been a consultant on national security and human rights matters for the Center for American Progress and the American Constitution Society.

  • Professor Elisabeth Wickeri

    Professor Elisabeth Wickeri is Executive Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School.  Professor Wickeri also directs the Center’s Asia Law and Justice Program and is Chair of the New York City Bar Association’s International Human Rights Committee.  She concentrates her research on human rights defenders, socio-economic rights, and the rights of vulnerable groups and people. At Fordham, Professor Wickeri teaches in the public international law curriculum, as well as the Leitner Center’s International Human Rights and Law and Development in Africa clinics, and has led human rights fieldwork in Bolivia, Cambodia, China, Ghana, Myanmar, Nepal, Hong Kong, Rwanda, and Tanzania. She also serves as a law lecturer and course director with the Center for International Humanitarian Cooperation.

  • Professor Joey Lee

    Professor Joey Lee is the Asia Law and Justice Fellow at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. At the Center, Professor Lee leads research and advocacy efforts to support strengthening of rule of law and human rights protections in Asia, with a focus on China and Myanmar. He also co-teaches in the Corporate Social Responsibility clinic, directing projects on corporate accountability for human rights impacts, particularly in the information and communications technology sector. Previously, he worked on these and other issues at Human Rights in China as a Bernstein Fellow in International Human Rights and later as Hong Kong Senior Program Manager. Prior to joining HRC, Professor Lee practiced business litigation at the Boston office of Edwards Wildman LLP, with a focus on directors’ and officers’ liability.

  • Professor Emily Smith Ewing

    Professor Emily Smith Ewing is PVH Corp. Fellow in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where she co-teaches in the Center’s CSR and International Law and Development in Africa clinics. Prior to joining the Leitner Center, Emily worked as a corporate lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, and directed a small NGO, Hands On Hong Kong, that advised companies on CSR programs, among other initiatives. With past work experience in London, Hong Kong, Southern China and New York, Emily now works on CSR issues across a range of industries and regions, including research on CSR in Africa, examining the rights of workers in the apparel sector across the globe, and investigating the social responsibility of lawyers to provide pro bono services in Colombia and Ghana, with upcoming projects in Argentina and Chile.

  • Professor Tracy Higgins

    Professor Tracy Higgins is Co-Founding Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. A former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, Professor Higgins has published numerous academic articles focused on feminist jurisprudence, international human rights, and constitutional law in many of the nation’s leading law journals. She has also conducted human rights fact-finding research in Bolivia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Kenya, Malawi, Romania, South Africa, and Turkey.

  • Professor Jeanmarie Fenrich

    Professor Jeanmarie Fenrich is the Director of Special Projects – Africa at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where she co- teaches in the Center’s Walter Leitner International Human Rights and International Law and Development in Africa clinics. She concentrates her research on customary law and gender equality and the human rights of minorities, and has conducted field research and authored publications on issues related to domestic violence, discrimination faced by women with HIV/AIDS, women’s property rights, and women in customary-law marriage under domestic and international human rights law.

  • Professor Zach Hudson

    Professor Zach Hudson is the Crowley Fellow in International Human Rights at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where he co- teaches in the Center’s Walter Leitner International Human Rights and International Law and Development in Africa clinics. Prior to joining the Leitner Center, Zach served as the Director of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Bombs, and was previously the Deputy Chief Operating Officer and Director of Humanitarian Campaigns for the United Nations Association of the USA.

  • Professor Robin Lenhardt

    Professor Robin Lenhardt is Professor of Law at Fordham Law School, where she specializes in race and civil rights, family law, and constitutional law. A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, she was also formerly a Counsel in the Washington, DC, office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where she was a member of the litigation team that defended the University of Michigan in the Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger affirmative action lawsuits. Professor Lenhardt also received a Skadden Foundation Fellowship to work as a staff attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and has served as an attorney advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.