The Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights has awarded its 2018 writing prizes for scholarly work that investigates issues central to its mission. Three awards have been made: the Writing Prize in Outstanding Scholarship, and awards for both Graduate and Undergraduate research. The 2018 winners and their topics are:
2018 Prize for Outstanding Scholarship
Michael Talbot
Associate Director, Master of Global Affairs, Keough School of Global Affairs
“Climate Refugees and Catholic Social Teaching”
Mr. Talbot examines Catholic Social Teachings’ approach to the challenges of human migration and environmental refugees. Juxtaposing the inadequacies of current international frameworks for protecting environmental migrants with previous sources of Catholic Social Teaching, he speculates on the possible moral argument to be made by the Church in support of efforts to fill a gap in the international legal framework around climate change induced migration.
Mr. Talbot’s paper will be published by Notre Dame Law School’s Journal of International and Comparative Law, and also on Convocate, CCHR’s online research portal connecting Catholic Social Teaching and international human rights law.
2018 Notre Dame Graduate Student Writing Prize
Shanna Corner
Doctoral candidate in sociology
“Global Secular Elites? Religious Identities, Context-Based Knowledge, and Meaning-Making Processes within United Nations Spaces”
Ms. Corner offers a detailed investigation of the United Nations treaty body that oversees the convention on women’s rights and aspects of its monitoring procedure. She demonstrates that the elites who work within this body vary in their religious/non-religious identities and personal knowledge about religion and religion-state relationships, and suggests that more finely grained investigations into the ways religious identities and knowledge are present and played out within the spaces of transnational regulatory institutions are needed.
Ms. Corner's paper will be published on the CCHR website.
2018 Notre Dame Undergraduate Student Writing Prize
Lawrenzo Howell
“Race and Satisfaction with College: Why White Students are More Satisfied with their College Experiences than Black Students”
Mr. Howell closely examines the complex relationship between race and college satisfaction, specifically measuring the ways in which the relationship is complicated by other factors such as institutional selectivity and racial composition, student relationships, and student satisfaction with diversity. His findings provide modest support for ethnic competition theory as an explanation for disparities in college satisfaction levels.
Mr. Howell's paper will be published on the CCHR website.
Each year CCHR seeks to support original, creative thinking on human and civil rights issues by both the scholarly and student communities, and expand the dialogue in ways consonant with the mission of CCHR and Notre Dame.