Marks first Senior Fellow at committee on rights studies

Provost Steven E. Hyman and the Chair of the University Committee on Human Rights Studies Professor John Coatsworth have announced the appointment of Stephen P. Marks as the first Senior Fellow at the University Committee on Human Rights Studies. His responsibilities will include working with the committee to expand undergraduate education opportunities in human rights, in cooperation with the associate dean of Undergraduate Academic Programs and the relevant Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) oversight committees and departments. He will also work with the staff of the University Committee to broaden opportunities for students to engage in study abroad, research, fellowships, and internships related to this field, and, he will work with the Office of International Programs and the Office of Career Services on these tasks.

Marks brings a remarkable range of experience to this endeavor. He is the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health and has a distinguished career in human rights education. He began his professional career at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where he was responsible for a global survey on university teaching of human rights and set up the program for the training and retraining of teachers of human rights. He then spent a decade in the human rights division of UNESCO in Paris, where his activities included the International Congress on the Teaching of Human Rights and the preparation of an international course book for university teaching of human rights. From there he went to the Ford Foundation, where he was in charge of international human rights, including support for numerous university-based human rights programs. He returned to UN service to head the section on human rights education, training, and information in the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Throughout his career, he has created programs and taught at numerous universities, including Columbia and Princeton. While at Columbia, he was director of UN Studies and co-director of the human rights and humanitarian affairs concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs. Marks has been at Harvard since 1999 and will take up his new responsibilities, along with those of his existing chair at the School of Public Health, on his return in June from his current sabbatical in Hong Kong.