As a Strategic Advisor to the Human Rights Foundation, among my responsibilities are to help create College Freedom Forums, and to further develop the Oslo Scholars Program.
Oslo Scholars
I first established the Oslo Scholars Program at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts in 2010. Every year, the Institute sends a handful of students, selected by the previous generation of Scholars, to Norway to attend the annual Oslo Freedom Forum of the Human Rights Foundation, and to assist one of the speakers of the Forum with their advocacy on the ground. They also attend the Freedom Forum in New York.
Over the years, our students have worked with remarkable individuals and organizations such as Srdja Popovic of CANVAS, Izzeldin Abuelaish of Daughters for Life, and Justine Hardy of Healing Kashmir. Most Oslo Scholars have been Institute stalwarts that I mentored in our other programs.
2014 Oslo Scholars Caitlin Thompson and Jack Margolin with HRF Chairman Garry Kasparov
The Program has since added chapters at Wellesley College and McGill University, and I have now expanded OS to Harvard University. Amitai Abouzaglo, Harvard '20, was the first Harvard undergraduate to join the Oslo Freedom Forum as an Oslo Scholar. I personally recommended Amitai, having met him in the context of his interest in non-violence activism and grassroots community building inspired by his past summer volunteer work in Israel and Palestine with Roots, and his initiative Embodying Peace.
The Oslo Scholars program is now an annual internship offering of Harvard’s undergraduate International Relations Council, taking applications from all Harvard undergraduates early in the Spring Semester.
In the COVID summer of 2020, the Scholars worked remotely with CANVAS of Serbia, founded by a good friend, Srdja Popovic; with One Day Seyoum of Eritrea; with the Courage Fund Cambodia; and with the Albert Einstein Institute of Cambridge, MA.
Together with the HRF and the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights we will be approaching the Central European University, now in Vienna. The CEU will enroll undergraduate students to create HRF presence through the Oslo Scholars and a potential first Wallenberg Centre for Human rights chapter at CEU.
The first College Freedom Forum was a joint initiative of the HRF and the Institute, and was held at Tufts in November 2013. The HRF has since organized College Freedom Forums with Yale University, Stanford University, and Universidad Francisco Marroquín.
On February 20th, 2019, we convened the first citywide College Freedom Forum in Boston, with the invaluable help of the International Relations Council and their President, Eliza Rebellion Ennis. The event featured opening remarks from Steven Pinker; talks from the vocally anti-Erdogan Turkish NBA player Enes Kanter, female genital mutation activist Leyla Hussein, Syrian citizen journalist Abdalaziz Alhamza, Chinese-Canadian dissident Ti-anna Wang; and a remarkable performance Venezuelan violinist and street protester Wuilly Arteaga. The audience included students from twenty-four campuses across Greater Boston.
This enthusiastically received initial effort has laid the foundation for a recurring program in Boston, with the continued partnership of the International Relations Council, and the involvement of Oslo Scholars and other human rights programs across universities in Greater Boston. For more on the success of the College Freedom Forum, see our After Action Report.
