A woman speaks to a group of young adults in a large room.

Human Rights Courses

Spring 2025

Instructor: Eric Stover

 

  • Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:10 – 3:25 p.m. (Human Rights Center)

This seminar will provide an opportunity to prepare a piece of writing suitable for publication. The written product could examine topics within the broad categories of legal accountability, transitional justice, war crimes, health and human rights, climate change, gender-based violence, the rights of LGBTI persons, counter-terrorism policies, gun violence, forensics, human trafficking, and migrant and refugee rights. The seminar will begin with a discussion of how to create the architecture and content for excellent scholarly writing. For the bulk of the semester, we will host a range of guest lecturers including legal scholars, journalists, and editors who will advise students on engaging writing techniques and how to prepare their work for publication. Students will also present drafts of certain sections of their papers for in-class feedback and discussion. Over the semester, participants will draft a 30-page piece of academic writing, such as a chapter for a Masters or Ph.D. dissertation, an article for an academic journal, or a long-form journalistic piece. The course is designed for JD, LLM, JSD and Ph.D. candidates from the JSP programs, as well as graduate students from other departments and schools. The final product can be used to meet Berkeley Law’s writing requirement. The course requirements will be weekly readings, including a careful reading of the works-in-progress of their classmates, active class participation, and the submission of a final, polished paper (with at least one complete revision). Students should have a topic(s) in mind for the writing workshop. Please feel free to reach out to Professor Eric Stover (stovere@berkeley.edu) during the registration period.

Instructors: Alexa Koenig, David Barstow, Sasha Schell

 

  • Seminar: Tuesdays from 3:35 p.m. – 5:25 p.m. (Human Rights Center, 2224 Piedmont Ave.)
  • Lab: Thursdays from 3:35 p.m. – 5:25 p.m. (Investigative Reporting Program, 2481 Hearst Ave.)

Journalism students are eligible for this course. In this foundational investigations course, students will use legal, reporting and digital research methods to investigate a series of human rights issues for real-world partners. The outputs will be journalistic, including a series of audio, written and/or visual stories. For 2024-2025, the investigation and resulting publications will be designed to bring broad attention to environmental destruction and violations of international, regional and domestic maritime law. Students will learn the following skills: beginning and intermediary digital research and investigation methods, including advanced Boolean searching, social media discovery and analysis, site domain and filetype searching, and deep web mining; verification techniques for digital materials (including photographs, videos, and printed documents); introductory geospatial and network analysis; traditional investigative methods, including interviewing and other offline investigative techniques; relevant ethical considerations; holistic security (including physical, digital and psychosocial risks and mitigating techniques); cross- disciplinary communication and collaboration; the collection and analysis of large datasets; how to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams; and relevant legal frameworks, including an introduction to human rights, humanitarian and international criminal law. Students will also learn the history of digital open source investigations, including their use in legal and journalism practice; how such investigations are transforming the communication of facts in media and courts; and the impact of law and reporting on peoples’ lives—especially their human rights. Students will work with award-winning faculty and staff from Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. Each class will include two hours on Tuesdays of a “Seminar Class” with skill building including open-source investigation methods (OSINT), along with two hours on Thursdays of “Story Lab” for collaborative research and trouble-shooting with the team and instructors. In addition, students will be expected to read all assigned materials and work independently on their research.