UWCHR steering committee member Chandan Reddy has been named a 2023 “Freedom Scholar” by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Chandan is an associate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies and of the comparative history of ideas at the University of Washington. He joined the Center for Human Rights’ steering committee in 2022 and co-leads the

Nearly fifteen years ago, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights was established by the Washington state legislature, and tasked with ensuring that UW human rights research spurs real-world impacts, whether here in Washington or elsewhere in the world. One of the most transformational ways we’ve lived into that mission is through developing our

The Peter Mack and Jamie Mayerfeld Fellowship from the UW Center for Human Rights has provided invaluable support for my dissertation research. My research examines the movements for and against “progressive” prosecutors in the United States. Democratically elected, with the power to file charges and to shape plea deals, local prosecutors represent one of the

The Osheroff-Clark Fellowship funding has been vital throughout the 2023 spring quarter for me and my fellow students at the University of Washington and has allowed the newly Registered Student Organization (RSO), Immigrant Rights are Human Rights: Students for La Resistencia, to establish itself within the campus community. With these funds, we’ve invested in a

With much gratitude to the Peter May and Jamie Mayerfeld research grant, I was able to conduct the empirical part of my dissertation. Over the spring and summer quarters, I fully developed survey experiments with a local public opinion poll company in Vietnam. My dissertation introduced a theoretical framework about international laws written by a

As this year’s Benjamin Linder Fellow, I have seen my research expand with a sense of immediacy and humanity that I would have thought impossible before I joined UW Center for Human Rights last fall. The first aspect of my work is to run what we call the “FOIA machine,” by which I mean keeping

Letter from the Director Fifteen years! It’s hard to believe. As I write these words, planning is underway for the celebration of our Center for Human Rights’ fifteen-year anniversary, and I find myself reflecting on all the changes this decade and a half has brought. In some ways, our Center still feels “new”—we’re still small,

This report is part of a series regarding Human Rights Conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, based on ongoing research efforts and released to highlight initial findings in the urgent context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contents: • Introduction • Background, Methodology, and Human Rights Standards • Sanitation of Food and Laundry •

Immigrant rights groups protest first King County deportation flight since May 2019 On the morning of May 2, 2023, an ICE Air deportation flight departed King County International Airport (Boeing Field), the first such flight in nearly four years, following a federal judge’s decision overturning a 2019 King County executive order barring ICE from using

Introduction In recent years, local and state governments in Washington have taken important legislative and executive action to protect vulnerable residents from rights abuses. Many of these actions, such as the so-called “sanctuary” laws of Keep Washington Working (2019) and Courts Open to All (2020) Acts, seek to protect the rights of migrants by limiting