Geyer joins Gzesh to help facilitate growth of Chicago’s Human Rights Program

Michael Geyer, the Samuel N. Harper Professor in History and the College, has been named the first Faculty Director of the Human Rights Program.

“Under Michael’s leadership, the program will introduce new teaching and research initiatives,” said Provost Thomas Rosenbaum. “The challenge for human rights teaching consists in amalgamating serious academic education with engagement in human rights work.”

To facilitate its planned growth, the Human Rights Program will relocate from the Center for International Studies to the Provost’s Office and will expand its existing Faculty Board. Susan Gzesh, who was appointed Director of the Human Rights Program in 2001, will continue as the Program’s Executive Director.

An interdisciplinary group of faculty founded the program in 1997, and its goals are to make human rights integral to liberal arts education, to further vigorous, scholarly debate on human rights and humanitarianism, and to explore, in research and teaching, the potential of a human rights program lodged in the academy and engaged with the world.

Gzesh will direct the program’s local operations as well as its national and international internship, engagement and collaborative activities. Gzesh also will maintain her appointment as Senior Lecturer in the College. Rosenbaum praised Gzesh for her advocacy and consulting work on migration and human rights.

Geyer’s main field of study is 20th-century German and European history. He has written on a wide range of topics, including war and genocide, resistance against the Third Reich, politics of memory, intellectuals in contemporary Germany, religion and nation, and on the history of human rights.