Photograph of Human Rights Gallery

Human rights issues and abuses affect us all regardless of who we are, where we come from, or what we believe in. This multi-media interactive display invites visitors to contemplate what unites us while exploring how intolerance toward what divides us can impact lives.

Right now, somewhere in the world, a person is threatened or persecuted for being just like you. Maybe he or she behaves like you, looks like you, or believes what you believe. In the Who, Like Me, is Threatened exhibit, visitors get to meet a person whose human rights have been violated because of a trait that they share.

Any one of us can be a human rights defender. All over the world, men, women and young people are moved by their principles to take that first step, and raise their voices, educate others, donate money, or organize and advocate for change.

About the Curator:
Jill Savitt, the President and CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, is a human rights advocate with expertise in genocide and atrocity prevention. She assumed this leadership role in March 2019, but has been involved with The Center since 2010 when she curated the Center’s exhibit on global human rights before the Center’s opening in 2014.

Previously, Savitt was the Acting Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The Center stimulates global action to prevent genocide and to catalyze an international response when it occurs. Before taking on this role and since 2010, Savitt was a Senior Advisor at the Museum. In this role, she curated the Museum’s Wexner Center, which presents exhibitions about contemporary genocides, served on the team working to revitalize the Museum’s permanent exhibition on the Holocaust; and also managed a range of public education initiatives for the Museum.

In 2007, before working as a consultant, Savitt founded and directed Dream for Darfur, a high-profile advocacy campaign that pressed the Chinese government to take specific actions regarding the Darfur crisis in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Games. The New York Times Magazine profiled Savitt and the initiative. Dream for Darfur was widely recognized for influencing the Chinese government to change its policies on Sudan in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics.

Savitt was the Director of Campaigns at Human Rights First from 2001 to 2007. She developed a campaign that recruited retired military leaders to bring US policies on torture and interrogation into compliance with US and international law. Earlier in her career, Savitt was the Communications Director at the Ms. Foundation for Women where she ran the successful “Take Our Daughters To Work” campaign.

Savitt taught, for three years, a course on human rights advocacy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She began her career as a reporter for WAMU, the NPR affiliate in Washington, DC. Savitt graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.