Spring 2025 elective courses announced for human rights certificate
Further details on requirements for the newly reinstated human rights certificate will likely be available next month, with plans for more human rights courses to be offered starting fall 2025.

Ellie Park, Multimedia Managing Editor
This semester, students can once again work toward a Certificate in Human Rights.
On Monday, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Risa Sodi announced via email that students can now choose from a list of 21 courses offered spring 2025 to count as electives toward the certificate. According to professor David Simon, a co-director of the newly reinstated certificate, more details regarding program requirements may be available as early as next month.
“I think the list shows that there are many more human rights topics that can and should be addressed here at Yale,” Simon wrote in an email to the News. “The Jackson School is likely to be offering more in the future.”
Though certain program features have yet to be finalized, Simon and professor Bonnie Weir, the other certificate program co-director, anticipate offering two versions of the certificate: an uncapped, nonselective Certificate in Human Rights and a selective, application-based Intensive Certificate.
The latter will more greatly resemble the original Multidisciplinary Academic Program — or MAP — in Human Rights Studies, which was paused in fall 2023 due to a mix of funding and capacity challenges.
“The application for the Intensive Certificate takes place in the spring of sophomore year,” Simon wrote. “This year only, current juniors may also apply.”
Whereas the nonselective certificate will entail taking one requisite course and three elective courses, the intensive certificate, like the original MAP, will feature a small cohort of around 15 students and a greater number of course requirements: one requisite course, four elective courses and a non-credited senior colloquium.
A version of Human Rights 100, the gateway course originally required for the MAP in Human Rights, will likely be offered as the requisite course for both versions of the reinstated certificate starting in fall 2025, per Simon. Simon expressed hope that, in the future, the program can also offer Human Rights 400, the original program’s senior capstone course, “but as of yet it is not part of the requirements of the intensive track of the program.”
The elective courses for the certificate are divided into domestic and international areas of study, and students will be required to take courses from both areas to complete either certificate. The courses are also tagged with the human rights elective attribute on Yale Course Search.
Simon highlighted that the resources of the Jackson School may make it possible to bring back defining aspects of the original program, especially elements that “fostered discussion and community outside of the classroom.”
“I can’t speak for the school … but from my perspective, Jackson has a fantastic capacity to bring human rights experts and practitioners to campus to teach as senior fellows or lecturers,” Simon wrote.
Simon and Weir, along with professor emeritus James Silk — who founded and directed the original program — worked with administrators in the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Jackson School to re-establish the human rights program.
“Being so familiar with Professor Silk was one of the biggest proponents of reinstating the program, because he had seen how much students appreciated and benefited from the original version,” Simon wrote.
In an email to the News, Silk wrote that he “did not participate at all in the selection process” for elective courses in the spring 2025 semester. Instead, Simon and Weir determined this semester’s elective options by surveying the Yale Course Search catalog.
The spring 2025 add/drop period ends on Jan. 22 at 5 p.m.