Events

Each year the Oak Institute hosts a series of events highlighting human rights in relation to the particular theme of the fellowship.  This year’s theme is Poverty and Human Rights.

2011 Oak Institute Events

Wednesday, September 21:
Fatima Burnad
“Untouchability and Human Rights: Fighting Poverty and the Caste System in India”
7:00pm, Diamond 122

“India’s caste system was officially ‘eradicated’ in 1950, and yet it continues to undermine the economic well-being and human dignity of thousands of people — especially the Dalit or ‘untouchables.’ This talk will focus on the efforts being made by one organization in India to defend the human rights of India’s most oppressed peoples.”

 

Wednesday, October 26:

Prof. Anirudh Krishna, Duke University
“One Illness Away: Global Poverty and Human Rights”
7:00pm, Diamond 122

How do people people “fall” into poverty, and how do they manage to escape what seems, to some, like their predetermined fate? Statistics don’t tell us very much.  Krishna, a political scientist  at Duke University, has tackled these questions in a fascinating new study of 35,000 households in five countries and four continents.

Sunday, November 6th:

Film Screening of “Living Broke in Boom Times”
6:30pm, Mary Low Coffee House

Living Broke in Boom Times: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty, follows an epic movement of poor Americans in the 1990s organizing to end poverty. The film contains commentary from key movement leaders Cheri Honkala, Willie Baptist and Liz Theoharis, who discuss the strengths and weaknesses of organizing and reflect on lessons learned from hard-won experience. Lessons learned that are ever more relevant today in the midst of the current economic crisis.  This intimate look at the realities of poverty in the United States is an eye-opening experience.

Wednesday, November 9:

Jesse Leah Vear, POWER
“Poverty in America: An Economic Human Rights Perspective”
7:00pm, Diamond 122

“In the U.S. today, 44 million people — about one out of every seven Americans — live in poverty. How can this happen in one of the richest countries on earth? Why do we allow it? This talk, presented by someone who has coped with hard times, will make the case for basic economic security as a fundamental human right. Jesse Leah Vear is a poverty rights activist who lives in Portland, ME.”

Wednesday, December 7:
ORO Research Team
“Social Exclusion and Human Rights”
7:00pm, Diamond 122

Colby students present the findings of independent research on excluded or marginalized groups that are asserting their human rights: the Uighers in China, the Banyamulenge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Roma in Europe, the Berbers in northern Africa, the Quechua in South America, and Muslims in the United States.

To learn more about past events please click here.