DURHAM, N.C.
A Duke University professor has found a hands-on way to teach students enrolled in a course on human-rights activism. He has them working with the grass-roots commission investigating the 1979 shootings at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro.
Eleven Duke students have spent the fall handling interviews and other research for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, probing events that unfolded several years before any of them were born.
“It’s been a very positive and compelling experience for the students,” Professor Robin Kirk said. “The commission needed help, and we were able to do a real-world, actual project.”
Kirk’s course is new this year and follows Duke’s “service learning” model of instruction, which emphasizes learning by doing. Students have also toured local sites that were important in the civil rights movement and another team from the class has worked with the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
Kirk coordinates the Duke Human Rights Initiative and knows people working with the Greensboro commission, leading to his decision to get his class involved.
Besides working for the Greensboro commission, students also attended an October public hearing, one of three the truth commission held this summer and fall.
