Human Rights and SMU

The Embrey Family Foundation has been one of most committed partners in the work we do in inner city East and South Dallas.  Their program related investment of $1,000,000 got our campaign to develop the new Opportunity Center at Malcolm X and I-30.  But the foundation, led by Lauren Embrey has tackled so many cutting edge efforts it's hard to describe the impact of their work. 

One of the most unique among their many efforts has been the founding of the Chair of Human Rights at Southern Methodist University.  Now the work of that original investment has resulted in SMU offering a major in Human Rights, placing the university in a very distinguished club of universities offering the degree. 

Here's what Mark Norris of The Dallas Morning News reported earlier this week about the amazing developments on the SMU hilltop: 

SMU to offer major in human rights

Adriana Martinez knew SMU was the place for her when she heard about its growing human rights program.


By her junior year, the native of Mexico was on the ground in Tucson, Ariz., talking to law enforcement and community members about immigration.

"It was a life-changing experience,” said Martinez, who is now a senior human rights minor. “It gave us an opportunity to hear from people who are rarely heard from.”

Getting out of the classroom and into the world is just one of the reasons human rights has become SMU’s fastest-growing program since it became a minor in 2007.

After receiving strong support from deans and faculty members at the university, the program was approved by the SMU Board of Trustees as the university’s newest major earlier this month.

SMU is only the fifth university in the U.S. to offer human rights as a major and the first west of the Mississippi River.

“It’s something I’d waited for, dreamed of,” said Rick Halperin, an SMU professor since 1985 who helped start the human rights program and is its director.

Halperin said he believes the new major appeals to the “idealism of youth” and young people’s desire to make the world a better place. More than 200 students are working toward the minor.

“I’ve always believed …young people who have a fervor and passion to make the world better would be attracted to it in large numbers,” Halperin said.

Students can begin taking classes toward a major in human rights this spring. Past classes count toward the major.

The major has two tracks: gender and human rights and public policy and human rights. Students must take 12 hours in a foreign language.

The human rights program was created in spring 2006 with a $1 million donation from the Embrey Family Foundation after Lauren Embrey and her two sons went on a 10-day school-sponsored trip with Halperin to Holocaust sites in Poland.

Every student majoring in human rights will participate in SMU’s annual civil rights pilgrimage through the southern United States, where students visit historic sites.

Multiple trips will be available for students to take each school year. Trips to Brazil, Poland, Rwanda/Uganda and Ukraine/Croatia are scheduled for 2012-13.

“Even as an undergrad, you can conduct your own research in ways you can’t at other universities at an undergrad,” said sophomore Michael Dearman, an English, philosophy and political science major who took part in an independent study class in which he looked into human rights abuses.

The human rights program is housed in Dedman College, home to SMU’s liberal arts majors. The bulk of human rights classes are history, political science, philosophy and anthropology.

But some courses are cross-disciplinary, such as an art history class about the Holocaust, a human rights and journalism course and a corporate ethics and social responsibility class in the business school.

Elazar Barkan, director of the Human Rights Concentration at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, said graduates there often find work with nongovernmental organizations and humanitarian groups.

But he said that more traditional companies are thinking about human rights issues as well.

That’s something Dearman is counting on.

“From public pressure or they’ve become ethically minded, companies are engaged in more humanitarian projects,” Dearman said. “I think human rights has practical applications.”

Martinez wants to work in a public sector job in Mexico after working in the U.S. Embassy there last summer. In addition to her human rights minor, she is majoring in French, history, political science and public policy.

Halperin says it’s the hard work of his students that motivates him to keep developing the human rights program.

“I know the average student does care about these issues and wants to do something,” he said.

Embrey Family Foundation and Human Rights

The story below appeared in The Daily Campus, the student newspaper at Southern Methodist University.  It reports on the groundbreaking work of the Embrey Family Foundation in estabishing the Chair of Human Rights at SMU. 

My dad and Lindsay Embrey were business partners for over 40 years in Richardson.  The investment of the foundation in this sort of work inspires me.  The Embrey Family Foundation made a catalytic investment in the development of the "Opportunity Center" that Central Dallas Ministries is developing at Malcolm X and I-30 to the tune of a $1,000,000 program related investment.  . 

Enjoy the story!

Embrey expands program
By JESSICA HUSEMAN, Editor-in-Chief, jhuseman@smu.edu
Published: Friday, September 10, 2010

The Embrey Human Rights program expanded into new offices in Clements Hall this year and is now the fastest growing program at SMU, thanks to the donation from the Embrey Family Foundation. .

In an interview with The Daily Campus, Lauren Embrey explained that her inspiration for facilitating the million-dollar donation was Professor Rick Halperin’s History of Human Rights class, which she took while pursuing her Master’s degree at SMU.

“I learned that information, and I knew I had an excellent, amazing education, and I knew that you’ve never heard of any of this information before. That was really the catalyst,” Embrey said.

At the conclusion of the course, Embrey decided to go on the course’s annual trip to visit death-camp sites in Poland with Halperin and bring her two sons, both freshmen at the time–one in high school and one in college.

“I don’t think they really knew what to expect,” Embrey said, whose sons were extremely receptive to the idea of spending their winter holiday on the trip.

“We spent Christmas together, the snowy Polish Christmas, traveling in a bus to different concentration and death-camp sites,” Embrey said. “It was a profound experience to be there and to feel the energy of these places. It gets you at a pretty deep level.”

As soon as she returned from the trip, Embrey set the wheels in motion to expand the Human Rights Program through the help of her family’s foundation. She set up a meeting with her sister Gale Embrey, Halperin and Pat Davis to discuss its expansion.

Once they had mapped out their vision, Embrey brought the idea to the Embrey Family Foundation’s Board of Directors, which quickly approved her suggestion.

“We have a very, very supportive board that understands our vision and what we want to do,” Embrey said. “So it passed through rather quickly.”

Four years later, the program has become a mainstay on the SMU campus. Embrey believes that the program fills a gap left open by the educational system. “In a sense, it was, ‘how dare my educational system think that they don’t have to give me this information, and that this information isn’t important to me as a human being,’” Embrey said.

She said the program is the perfect way to address the need for more education on human rights and that the applied version of classroom learning used by Halperin is the best way to meet this need.

“Sitting and reading a book is fine,” Embrey said. “But when you actually experience something on top of that, it compounds it and reinforces it and makes it stronger.”

Embrey wants the program to continue to expand and to become more integrated into the SMU student body.

Lauren Embrey’s father, Lindsay Embrey, founded the Embrey Family Foundation in 2004, and its original goal didn’t necessarily include the promotion of human rights.

"Dad was always big in education, and we believe that as well, and we have held to that,” Embrey said. “He pretty much formed it and left it to Gale and I to decide its direction.”

That organization has become a human rights-focused foundation which funds human rights education opportunities into which the SMU Human Rights Program fits neatly.

Embrey says she is thankful that expanding the program has been a relatively easy process. She says that the administration and the staff at SMU have been welcoming of her ideas, and she is confident that, with their help, the program will continue to improve and expand.

“We are just really grateful that it is a partnership, and that people understand our vision and are with us on it,” Embrey said.