The Know Your Rights! Human Rights in Hawaii Series

The County of Maui Office of Innovation & Sustainability (OIS) begins a new International Relations & Rights Initiative covering major themes for transformative human rights promotion and protection in Hawai’i.  In 2025, there are major global, national and local developments that demand a cultivation of the rule of law, mutual respect and inherent dignity for all.  The Know Your Rights! Human Rights in Hawaii Series brings together county and community to understand our universal human rights and stand in solidarity and unity for each other in pursuit of equality and equity.  

The inaugural Know Your Rights/ Human Rights in Hawai’i event will feature Harvard Law Professor of Practice and former President & Co-Founder of the Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab. The series will empower and engage Maui Nui around the upcoming Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United States of America at the United Nations.

Alan Jenkins, Harvard Law Professor, will deliver talk January 21, Tuesday, at noon, at the Mayor’s Conference Room covering “Moving Hearts, Minds and Public Policy for Human Rights in a New Era and at  4:30 p.m. at University of Hawaii Maui College Open Air Hale, on Protecting Freedom, Justice and Democracy in the Spirit of Solidarity and Nonviolence 365.

Jenkins will share on transformative strategies and communication for social justice.  Jenkins talk will build upon the courses he teaches at Harvard Law covering Race and the Law, Communications and Supreme Court Jurisprudence.  Jenkins will also share about founding The Opportunity Agenda.

Jenkins’s prior positions have included Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he represented the United States government in constitutional and other litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court; Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, where he managed grantmaking in the United States and eleven overseas regions; and Associate Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he defended the rights of low-income communities facing exploitation and discrimination. He previously served as a Law Clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.

The Know Your Rights! Human Rights in Hawaii Series features individuals dedicated to fundamental freedoms, inherent dignity of all individuals and collective rights of our community.   This series aims to facilitate essential conversations about communications for social change and how we can come together to create a more just world beginning in Maui Nui.