Summer Human Rights Fellowships

Application Deadline: The application for Summer 2025 is now open. Please submit your applications by Friday, March 7, 2025.

Access the online application here.

The Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice provides summer funding to Texas Law students interested in doing transnational or international work on issues of human rights or social justice. Fellows have contributed to human rights and social justice projects at non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations in the US and abroad. In the past, Texas Law students have worked in locations as diverse as the UK, Cambodia, Mexico, India, and the US on projects including aiding political refugees, advocating for women’s rights, and seeking nationality rights for minors. For a list of placements students have held in the past as well as organizations we have identified that accept law school students for summer internships, please see the Human Rights Internship & Employment Database. You should not feel limited by these options.

For summer 2025, the Rapoport Center is offering the Charles Moyer Human Rights Fellowship.

The Charles Moyer Human Rights Fellowship honors the life and work of Charles Moyer, whose professional career has been devoted to the international protection of human rights, and who was the first Secretary of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The fellowship is open to all first and second year students in a JD program at Texas Law.

Eligibility

Fellowships are open to all first- and second-year students in a JD program at Texas Law. The host organization for the summer fellowship must be a non-profit or intergovernmental organization working to advance the inter-American human rights system.

Proposals for split summers will be considered, but proposals for the full summer are preferred. Fellowships will not be awarded for any work for which a student is receiving academic credit.

Funding

Our fellowships provide a $800/week stipend for up to 10 weeks (400 hours) of service. If it is necessary for a summer fellow to work remotely, we may adjust our requirements. Any supplemental funding from the host organization or other sources must be indicated. Our policy on funding from multiple sources is identical to the policy applied by the Law School's Summer Public Service Program. Funding through the Charles Moyer Human Rights Fellowship is awarded instead of (rather than in addition to) the stipend offered by the Summer Public Service Program and the William Wayne Justice Center's named fellowships.

If you are not selected for the Moyer Human Rights Fellowship, you may still access funding to do public interest work through the William Wayne Justice Center's named fellowships or the Summer Public Service Program (SPSP). Please note that the Justice Center' named fellowships and SPSP require a separate application with additional application deadlines (see the SPSP website for more information).

Additionally, even if you are not selected for one of our fellowships, the Rapoport Center is committed to supporting all law students with guidance for summer placements, based on the candidate's skills, foreign language proficiency, background interests and experience. If you would like assistance in finding a placement, please contact Ariel Dulitzky or Cooper Christiancy.

View our current and former summer fellows

Rapoport Center fellowships have been made possible by the generous support of: The Ford Foundation; Scott Hendler and Lulu Flores of Hendler Lyons Flores; the Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Karpen Moffitt Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Law; and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

Previous placements include:

ACLU, American Gateways, Beijing University Women's Legal Aid Center (China), Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, Center for Governance and Development (Kenya), Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, Children at Risk, Disability Rights Texas, Documentation Center of Cambodia (Cambodia), Equal Justice Center, Farmworker Justice, Ghana Center for Democratic Development (Ghana), Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, Human Rights Law Network (India), Human Rights USA, Human Rights Watch, Inter-American Foundation, Kurdish Human Rights Project (United Kingdom), Lawyers Without Borders, Legal Resources Centre (South Africa), Mental Health Advocacy Services, Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, Myrna Mack Foundation (Guatemala), Orleans Public Defenders, Protimos (United Kingdom), Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (Mexico), Robert F. Kennedy Center For Justice and Human Rights, South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, Texas Civil Rights Project, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, UN Special Rapporteur on Health (India), UN Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights (Panama), UNHCR Political Asylum Project, and the World Organization for Human Rights USA.

2019 Summer Human Rights Fellow Johnathan Gooch & Berta Cáceres Human Rights Fellow Elizabeth Hamilton

"My summer at the Workers Defense Project opened my eyes to the wide range of tools available to those of us working in the immigrants’ rights space. I’ve learned a great deal from the organizers, attorneys, and workers themselves who are committed to fighting for better working conditions for immigrant construction workers."
- Nina Colombotos, Workers Defense Project, 2022

"Working at MALDEF as a Summer Human Rights Fellow taught me the unique contributions a non-profit can make in voting rights litigation when otherwise powerful entities refuse to pay attention to the constituencies that matter."
- Carson Smith, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 2022

"During my internship at Reprieve, I worked on the Guantanamo Team with my supervisor to defend six wrongfully detained men. This experience helped me actualize my passion for national security law, and I hope to make a career out of it in the future."
- Duriba Khan, Reprieve, 2022