2025 Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize Winners Announced
From the 2025 Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize Judges
Professors Claudia Koonz, Ellen McLarney, Juliette Duara, and Nicole Barnes
We are excited to award the 2025 Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize to two outstanding students: Isabella Palmer, for "The Longest Line in New York," the second chapter of her cultural anthropology honors thesis, Sanctuary In Crisis: The Violence of Seeking Asylum In New York City; and Leila Zak, for her project, “Flowers for the Future” — Education as the Sun and the Watering.
Isabella Palmer’s cultural anthropology honors thesis Sanctuary In Crisis: The Violence of Seeking Asylum In New York City explores refugees’ human right to seek asylum. She shows that rather than providing protection, the asylum system in the US perpetuates further violences against those seeking refuge. Her chapter “The Longest Line in New York” shows the hardship refugees face waiting in long lines without access to food, water, or shelter. But Palmer also shows how “time is weaponized against migrants” through bureaucratic policies that make it hard to rebuild their lives. Drawing on rigorous field work and in depth research, Palmer writes eloquently, keenly analyzing the impossible position of asylum seekers as they struggle to find refuge.
Leila Zak (心恬Xin Tian) is the winner in the non-traditional category with her project, “Flowers for the Future" – Education as the Sun and Watering, provides online education in STEM, arts, and humanities topics to girls in a district of Kabul, Afghanistan. Zak’s initiative directly counteracts the pernicious effects of institutionalized sexism that keeps girls and women silenced and denies them an education beyond the 6th grade, which forecloses their opportunities for college education and professional training. Through a partnership with California-based High Bluff Academy, young women in Afghanistan can earn a US high school diploma, and some graduates have received scholarships for college. First-year student Zak worked with Flowers for the Future project prior to Duke. She founded the Hong Kong branch, won a $3,000 grant from the IB Global Youth Action Fund, and helped to found three additional branches in Europe (in Italy, The Netherlands, and Georgia). Zak also worked through the pivot from hybrid classrooms to an all-online classroom after the Taliban government instituted the Vice and Virtue Law in 2024, which included a fundraising campaign to purchase tablets and laptops for students to access the all-digital curriculum. At Duke, Zak recruits volunteers among her fellow students to provide education in a wide variety of subjects every Tuesday and Thursday morning Durham time. Zak brings tireless energy to her work, which includes adjusting curricula to suit local needs, soliciting feedback from the students, designing assessments to test their skills, providing substantive feedback to students on their work, and creating live science demonstrations. Notably, Leila Zak brings compassion and sincerity to her work in bridging cultural worlds, counteracting oppression, and honoring the humanity of her fellow human beings.
Note: A description of Leila's project is linked above. The short film itself will be linked to soon.
The Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Prize is awarded annually to the best essay/paper or alternative project prepared by an undergraduate for the academic year.