Around the Schools: Harvard Divinity School

For a week in late January, five Harvard Divinity School students witnessed firsthand the impact of human rights abuses suffered by many Hondurans after a 2009 coup in which Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by the country’s military.

Karen Bray, Tiffany Curtis, Garrett Fitzgerald, Julie Rogers, and Marianne Tierney traveled to Honduras with human rights experts and met local leaders to examine and discuss the fragile situation surrounding the ongoing Honduran constitutional crisis.

Monica Maher, former HDS lecturer and current research fellow of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies, organized the trip and led a discussion of the group’s findings at an informal presentation in February, held at Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS).

Tierney said, “Each one of us who went was significantly impacted by this trip. When we came back to school and people asked, ‘How was your trip?’ it was really difficult to put into words. I started saying things like, ‘It was incredible, rejuvenating, inspiring, heartbreaking, intellectually stimulating, exhausting, depressing, amazing.’ Ultimately, it was an extremely powerful experience.”

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