Kristi Rudelius-Palmer Wins O’Brien Award for Human Rights Education

Human Rights Educators USA announced today that Kristi Rudelius-Palmer, co-director of the University of Minnesota Human Rights Center (HRC), is the recipient of the 2015 Edward O’Brien Award for Human Rights Education. The award was made during the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies in New Orleans.

Established in memory of Ed O’Brien, pioneer human rights educator, the O’Brien Award honors an outstanding contribution to human rights education in the United States.

In recognizing Rudelius-Palmer, Scott Hirschfeld of the U.S. Committee for UNICEF observed that under her leadership the HRC, which is headquartered at the Law School, had established the most extensive national resource center for human rights education; developed the first statewide human rights curriculum; published a curriculum series on critical human rights topics; and, through its seminars and institutes, trained a new generation of human rights educators. He also praised her vision of human rights as both a body of international law and a lived value system, accessible not only to scholars but also to teachers and learners of all ages.

Rudelius-Palmer has been co-director of the HRC since 1989. Her achievements have included developing an internship and fellowship program providing more than 600 grants to individuals in the Upper Midwest; managing the Human Rights Library, the world’s largest online collection of human rights documents; and coordinating public events, film series, and courses for teachers. She is also an adjunct professor at the Law School, and has been director of the Humphrey Fellowship Program there since 2008. She was a founder of the Partners in Human Rights Education Program and a founding member of Human Rights Educators USA.