Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice
The Rapoport Center is committed to interdisciplinarity. Lawyers and law students work side by side with scholars and practitioners across disciplines that include anthropology, sociology, government, fine arts, and public policy. The Center’s motto is “Partners for Change at the Intersection of Academics and Advocacy,” representing its unique position as an academic center that not only works across disciplines, but also collaborates with communities outside the academy with the aim of producing innovative and enduring change in the lives of marginalized individuals and groups.
Upcoming Events
The Rapoport Center Presents Viet Thanh Nguyen: “On Undefeated Despair: Writing Inside Empire” — The 10th Annual Farenthold Endowed Lecture
Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture Series in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights | Presented in partnership with the Rothko Chapel
Please join us for the tenth annual Sissy Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, which will be presented by Pulitizer Prize–winning author Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen is University Professor and the Aerol Arnold Chair of English at the University of Southern California. His celebrated work includes To Save and to Destroy: Writing as an Other (Harvard University Press, 2025), A Man of Two Faces (Grove Press, 2023), The Refugees (Grove Press, 2017), and The Sympathizer (Grove Press, 2015), which received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The lecture will take place at the Avaya Auditorium (Peter O’Donnell Jr. Building Room 2.302, University of Texas at Austin, 201 E 24th St, Austin, TX 78712) at 6:00 pm on March 26, 2026. The event is co-sponsored by the Joynes Reading Room (Plan II Honors Program), the Michener Center for Writers, and the New Writers Project.