Backpacker, Go! Winter 2025 NewsletterEva Benzan- EditorAngelina Cicchini, Co-EditorGigi Ginocchio, Co-EditorYeabu Sesay, Co-EditorUC Davis Backpack Guide CollectivePublished by the Article 26 Backpack team at the University of California, Davis, Human Rights Studies Backpacker, Go! provides resources, news, and relevant information to Backpackers to support them in protecting their human right to education. Welcome to the Winter 2025 Backpacker Go! Newsletter.
The incredible interdisciplinary and public scholarship opportunities of Human Rights Studies at UC Davis were demonstrated by the participants — faculty, graduate students, education professionals and undergraduate Human Rights Studies Minors — of the 3rd UC Davis Human Rights Studies Spring Research Symposium, May 26, 2023 – International House, Davis.
During 2021-2022, UC Davis Human Rights Studies faculty, staff, and students collaborated with Kepler to facilitate higher education access for over 2,200 university-age refugees in Rwanda using Article 26 Backpack. Article 26 Backpack, or "Backpack", works to meet the needs of young refugees and displaced people to achieve document safety and security.
I’m Dheera Dusanapudi, a Human Rights Studies student and second-year International Relations major. I am also one of the four UC Davis students in Buenos Aires presenting at the third Foro Mundial de Derechos Humanos, alongside Emma Tolliver, Valerie Lima, and Ella Ross.
British-Ghanian architect David Adjaye’s design of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, DC grabs you by both shoulders and demands that you not look away as it draws you down into the painful story at the heart of America’s past.
The University of California, Davis Human Rights Studies Program recognizes that University of California graduate students, researchers, student employees and postdocs have engaged in efforts to secure fair wages, benefits and working conditions. Considering these efforts, we express our support for our fellow academic workers and call on the UC to bargain in good faith and hope a just and fair agreement can be achieved quickly.
We also reaffirm our support for Article 23:3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
The UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program stands in solidarity with the people of Iran as many have taken to streets in protest of the death in custody of a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Zhina Mahsa Amini. She was arrested and beaten by members of Iran’s Gašt-e Eršād or Guidance Patrol, more commonly called, the “morality police” for allegedly wearing her hijab — a legally required headscarf — improperly.
UC Davis Human Rights Studies stands in solidarity with the Davis Jewish community in the face of a recent hate incident and ugly episode of Holocaust denial. We are committed to a campus where all are welcomed and safe and where civil discourse based on facts and evidence are practiced widely and truth matters.
Text of comments delivered at the UC Davis Teaching History Conference – May 8, 2021
This last year, UC Davis’ Human Rights Studies Program surpassed 1000 enrollments in our courses, making us the largest program in California and we thing perhaps the nation.
It is an exciting, rewarding, and relevant field to teach and do research in and students respond well and engage enthusiastically.
This page has been developed to include resources and provide a space for pre-Summit preparations and conversations around the global challenge of failing to protect the Human Right to Education.
