The National Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs awarded its National Faculty Award to SMU Professor and Director of the Human Rights Program Rick Halperin.
Halperin teaches in the department of History and in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program.
The award “recognizes an outstanding faculty member who exemplifies the qualities of interdisciplinary, liberal learning, and who has participated significantly in teaching, mentoring, and advising students, as well as actively participated in other faculty service in a graduate liberal studies program,” according to an SMU press release.
His career includes stints as chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA from 1992-1993 and 2005-2007. He is a member and past president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He is also involved with the National Death Penalty Advisory Committee.
Halperin has also worked with a United Nations Human Rights delegation that inspected prison conditions for the Irish Prison Commission. He traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland and Dublin, Ireland for the delegation.
He was part of an Amnesty International group that inspected the Terrell Unit in Livingston, which houses the death row facility. He also worked in El Salvador in 1987 with a human rights monitoring group.
According to the press release, “Halperin, a longtime human rights advocate and member of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA, regularly leads groups on human rights educational journeys to places such as Cambodia, Rwanda, South Africa, El Salvador, Bosnia and numerous Holocaust sites across Europe. Every December he takes a group to death camps and other Holocaust sites in Poland for two weeks.
“In addition to his work against the death penalty, Halperin works with a variety of organizations which seek improvements in human rights on behalf of women, children, gays and lesbians, indigenous persons, survivors of torture, imprisoned political prisoners of conscience and human rights defenders, journalists, and health care professionals.”
