Announcing the 2025-26 Carr-Ryan Center Fellows
The Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights is excited to announce its 2025–2026 Fellowship cohorts. With the addition of two new fellowship programs and individuals coming to the Center with incredibly diverse backgrounds and expertise in human rights policy, our new fellows will form valuable intellectual partnerships amongst one another and with others at Harvard Kennedy School.
Carr-Ryan Center Fellowship
The Carr-Ryan Center Fellows are post-docs, scholars, human rights defenders, senior leaders in international organizations, and heads of human rights organizations. Meet our 2025-26 cohort below.
The Fellows:
International Human Rights Advocate; Executive Director, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights
Senegalese women's rights activist; Founder, Femmes Africa Solidarité
Vice President, Research & Policy, Disability:IN
Senior Associate in the Human Rights Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Ann E. Towns
Professor of Political Science, University of Gothenburg
Human Rights and Foreign Policy Fellowship
The Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School proudly announces the launch of the Human Rights & U.S. Foreign Policy Fellowship, a bold new initiative designed to preserve human rights as a cornerstone of American diplomacy and global leadership.
At a time of deep geopolitical uncertainty and rising authoritarianism worldwide—and amid growing threats to democratic values at home—the new program brings together some of the most accomplished human rights practitioners in U.S. government to mentor, teach, and collaborate with the next generation of public leaders.
The Fellows:
Inaugural Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, U.S. State Department from (2022-2025)
Former special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for International Organizations, National Security Council
Former Special Representative for International Labor Affairs, U.S. State Department
Former U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons
Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Fellowship
We are proud to announce the launch of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Fellowship at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School. Working directly with the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program, this initiative supports scholars and practitioners focused on producing high-impact research on some of the most pressing LGBTQI+ topics of our time.
Our inaugural class of Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Fellows will focus on advancing timely and transformative scholarship. Beyond their individual research projects, fellows will also become active members of our academic community—hosting study groups, seminars, and public conversations, and participating in the overall programming of the Carr-Ryan Center.
The Fellows:
Lamyaâ Achary (They/Them)
Sociologist; Human Rights Researcher
Nayyab Ali (She/Her)
Human Rights Defender; Gender Policy Strategist; Published Author and Researcher; Social Scientist
Jean Freedberg (She/Her)
Former Global Partnerships Program Lead, Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
Reginald W Greer II (He/Him)
Public Engagement Strategist and LGBTQI+ Advocate; former Senior Advisor to Jessica Stern
Jonathan Jayes-Green (Any/All)
Democracy, LGBTQI+, and Racial Justice Advocate; Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Nonviolent Action Lab within the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Jamie Keene (She/Her)
Policy Leader on Civil Rights, Democracy, and Racial and Economic Justice; former Special Assistant to the President for Equality and Opportunity
Okwara Masafu (She/They)
Kenyan Human Rights Attorney
Philomena Polefrone (She/Her)
Associate Director, American Booksellers for Free Expression
Kimahli Powell (He/Him)
Former Director, Rainbow Railroad
Racial Justice Fellowship
The Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights is excited to announce its 2025–2026 Racial Justice Fellows. Coming to the Center with expertise in the history of racial justice in the United States, critical race theory, and the efficacy of acknowledgement and apology in the face of historical wrongs.
Our Racial Justice Fellows hail from academia and civil society. During their time at the Carr-Ryan Center, they design and develop a research project salient to their own expertise and the research priorities of the Center. The Carr-Ryan Center’s Racial Justice Program focuses on reimagining systems, institutions, and movements to promote racial and economic equity for all. A special interest of this year's Racial Justice cohort is carcerality in the United States.
The Fellows:
Associate professor in the Department of African American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Missouri-Columbia
Senior Counsel, Legal Defense Fund
Historian, University of Michigan; Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft-prize winning author of "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy"
Technology and Human Rights Fellows
The Carr Center's Technology and Human Rights program is a core initiative that explores how technological progress shapes the future of human life and impacts human rights protections. For at least the next three years, this program will focus on the urgent theme of “Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy: Who Knows, Who Decides?"
The Fellows:
Program Coordinator, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
Distinguished Fellow, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law
Senior Staff Attorney with the Democracy, Speech & Technology program, ACLU of Northern California
French-Japanese economist; PhD researcher in economics, European University Institute
Council on Foreign Relations-Hitachi Fellow
Senior Researcher, Power for Democracies
former Senior Researcher for Platform Integrity, Mozilla
former Member of the Georgian Parliament
Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley; Visiting Fellow at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg and LMU Munich; Senior Advisor for Power for Democracies
CEO, Alami Capital
Communication Strategist; Policy Advocate
Data Scientist
Brazilian Researcher and Writer
Journalist and Researcher; Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Journalist, Author; Activist
Researcher, Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI); Associate Research Fellow, Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Human Rights Scholar and Advocate
