And justice for all
Universities and academics are never short on ideas, but Sharon Ravitch, interim director at Penn's Center for Collaborative Research and Practice in Teacher Education, believes they have a responsibility to provide more: Specifically, action.
Ravitch practices what she preaches, too. She recently began working with Global Rights, an international human rights advocacy group, to design an international research study that will help residents of war-torn Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia and Liberia better understand their rights and access to justice. Ravitch and her team will train residents to continue the training after she departs, a strategy that will ensure future generations will have access to this knowledge, too.
"This is a much more democratic, much less hierarchical model for doing international research in developing nations," Ravitch says. "We're devising ways to figure out [how to give them] access to justice. We're educating people about their rights, getting them lists of resources. In that way the research becomes a social-service civil rights intervention."
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