Refugees, Migrants, and Human Rights: Global Challenges and the Way Forward
📅 Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026
⏰ Time: 1:40 - 2:55 PM
🏫 Location: New Building, 1st Floor, Room 1.109, at John Jay College
This event is co-sponsored by the Political Science Department, Pi Sigma Alpha Theta Chapter, the United Nations Student Association, and the Center for International Human Rights.
Guest speaker, Eleanor Acer is Senior Director for Global Humanitarian Protection at Human Rights First. Human Rights First advocates for the protection of human rights globally and in the United States. Ms. Acer works with partners around the world to strengthen adherence to human rights law and treaties and for global standards that protect the rights of refugees, forcibly displaced people and at-risk migrants. Both in the United States and through UN systems, she has worked to protect rights amidst an array of human rights challenges, including those relating to asylum, detention, fair adjudications, third country arrangements, and rising xenophobia.
Art Under the Nazi regime: Legal and Ethical Dimensions of the Restitution of Stolen Art
📅 Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2026
⏰ Time: 2:00 PM
🏫 Location: Room 630, Haaren Hall, John Jay College
This event is hosted by the Department of Political Science, the Department of Art and Music, and the Center for International Human Rights.
The Holocaust will forever stand as one of the greatest crimes against humanity. It also constitutes one of the largest acts of theft in history. Art confiscation by the Nazis began in Austria in 1938, in Poland in 1939, and in 1940 Adolf Hitler ordered the confiscation of all private Jewish art collections. Hundreds of thousands of cultural items – paintings, books, and antiques – were stolen or destroyed during the plunder of occupied Europe. Restitution in the eighty years since 1945 has been tortuously slow and complex; and the laws on restitution have become correspondingly more nuanced and sophisticated in response to the competing claims of governments, museums, the art market, and the heirs of the original owners. Within the United States, Congress has repeatedly enacted legislation on restitution, most recently the proposed Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2025 that passed the Senate and awaits House consideration.
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