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This cash prize is awarded to the rising Columbia College senior majoring in Human Rights who submits the best proposal for a summer or term-time human rights internship, and is intended to be used to help defray the expenses of the internship.
This prize is awarded annually to the Columbia College student majoring in human rights who has the highest grade point average and a superior record of academic achievement in Human Rights.
This cash prize is awarded to the rising Columbia College senior majoring in human rights who submits the best proposal for a summer or term-time human rights internship, and is intended to be used to help defray the expenses of the internship. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year, with priority admission dates of December 1 for Spring term submissions, and April 1 for Summer submissions. Alternatively, for general research or internship funding, students should review ISHR's undergraduate financial resources page. Please apply here: APPLICATION: Myra Kraft Human Rights Prize
Daya is a rising senior at Columbia College studying Human Rights with a concentration in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. With a mixed background of Indian, Israeli, Moroccan, and Kurdish Iraqi heritage, Daya is interested in studying and working on issues of conflict and migration. She is spending this summer interning at the International Rescue Committee in New York as an Adult Education Administrative Assistant.
Meghana Bharadwaj is a May 2020 graduate from Columbia University, holding a degree in Human Rights. Her coursework has focused on children's rights, criminal justice reform, and socioeconomic inequality more broadly. Her independent research as part of the thesis seminar focused on the tension between rehabilitation and due process rights in prosecutorial practice in New York's Family Courts. Off campus, she is the Founder and Executive Director of Just For Kidz, a youth-run national non-profit with the goal of serving marginalized children through service and advocacy, and she has worked with multiple children's rights organizations including the Children's Defense Fund, Avenues for Justice, and the National Juvenile Justice Network. Meghana hopes to become an advocate for legal reform on behalf of children, and as such, will be attending Harvard Law School in the Fall of 2022. In her free time, Meghana enjoys dancing hip-hop and Bhangra as part of Columbia's Bhangra team, playing flamenco guitar, and trying different restaurants and ice cream places around New York City.
As a double major in Human Rights and Psychology, Brooke has long been interested in how and why conflicts develop as well as how to identify sustainable interventions that can help break cycles of violence. During her undergraduate career at Columbia, Brooke served as a Lead Activist for the Columbia Democrats as well as a Policy Director for the Columbia University Students for Human Rights, advocating successfully for the group's official establishment. Her work at The Fortune Society as part of a Kenneth Cole Community Engagement Fellowship enabled her to examine critically the criminal justice system in the United States while an internship at Doctors Without Borders during the Ebola crisis gave her a inside perspective on the complexity of international humanitarian aid work. After studying abroad in Dharamsala, India, Brooke wrote her senior human rights seminar paper on how the Tibetan Exile community understands and employs human rights rhetoric in their political and social struggle. Following graduation, Brooke completed service as a Peace Corps Community and Youth Development Volunteer in Armenia before undertaking an AmeriCorps Project Conserve position in her hometown of Brevard, North Carolina. In fall of 2018, Brooke will enter UMass Amherst's Psychology of Peace and Violence Program in pursuit of a doctoral degree in Social Psychology.
