University Level Seminars

                                                  University students

University of Washington -
U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights

One October afternoon in 1982, three gentlemen got together and brain-stormed how they might use the William Penn House for a student seminar. Little did they know that this one seminar would evolve into more than 25 years of seminars for students interested in public and foreign policy.

Bob Schultz a retired professor brought the first students in 1983 from the University of Denver, Colorado where he was teaching a course called War, Peace and Conscience. "The Washington DC area offered an inviting environment into which I could transplant the course and the William Penn House offered rich nutrients to make a transplant grow" says Bob Schultz. When Schultz moved to the University of Washington, Bothell he transformed the course into a course on human rights.

Seminar Activities

Each year students in the course spend 7 days in Washington DC. The course professor and William Penn House staff collaborate on choosing 15 to 18 speakers for the DC portion of the course.

The William Penn House program coordinator and the program intern then schedule visits to various think tanks, human rights organizations and other offices of interest to the students. Some of the places that the students visit include:

  • The State Department
  • The Pentagon
  • Senate Department
  • Amnesty International
  • Human Rights Watch
  • The Heritage Foundation
  • Embassies