UT Hosting Sixth Annual Human Rights Day Conference April 22

The University of Tampa will host its sixth annual Human Rights Day Conference on Saturday, April 22. Attendees will explore the theme Migration, Immigration and Refugee Rights through panels, presentations and creative works from UT faculty and students as well as outside speakers.

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the ninth floor of the Vaughn Center and is free and open to the public.

The conference will kick off with a screening of Drawing the Tiger. Filmed over seven years, the documentary follows a rural Nepalese family as they try to escape the cyclical debt and poverty of subsistence farming. After the screening, co-directors Amy Benson and Scott Squire will deliver a keynote address on their behind-the-scenes journey of making the film.

In the afternoon, attendees can choose from several concurrent sessions. Room one sessions include:

Contested Borders, Refugees and Human Security: A Case Study of Kashmir, Aurobinda Mahapatra, Fellow at the Center for Peace, Development and Democracy, University of Massachusetts Boston, 2 p.m.
Social Justice Communication and Actuality Media, Christopher Boulton, UT students and a representative from Actuality Media, 3 p.m.
Migrant Rights Panel, Scott Solomon, associate professor of government and international affairs at the University of South Florida; Mary Meyer, professor of political science at Eckerd College; and Tara Deubel, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, 4 p.m.

Room two sessions include:

Central American Migrants: Social and Economic Causes of Emigration, Harry E. Vanden, professor of government and international affairs at the University of South Florida, 2 p.m.
Florida Institute for Community Studies (FICS), Alayne Unterberger, FICS founder and research director, 3 p.m.
Fair Food and Human Rights: How the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Consumer Allies Have Transformed the Agricultural Industry, Coalition of Immokalee Workers representatives, 4 p.m.

The conference will end with a discussion of the CARIBE Refugee Program with coordinator Ronald Alan Cruz at 5 p.m.

The conference is organized by Bruce Friesen and Marcus Arvan of the Human Rights Think Tank, and is sponsored by the UT College of Social Sciences, Mathematics and Education, the UT Department of Philosophy and Religion, the UT Honors Program and UNA-USA Tampa Bay.

For more information, go to www.ut.edu/humanrightsday or contact Friesen at bfriesen@ut.edu or (813) 257-3464, or Arvan at marvan@ut.edu or (813) 257-3674.