In the above video, 2015 Humanity in Action Fellow Kari Barclay '16 describes his work in Copenhagen. His fellowship focused on human rights.
His efforts to connect art and humanities learning to community activism also have a local component. Barclay's community involvement here in Durham earned him a 2016 Samuel Dubois Cook Society Award. The society was founded in 1997 to honor the university's first African-American faculty member as well as community members who follow Cook's example of social activism and leadership.
An Angier B Duke scholar, Barclay has directed more than a dozen theater productions at the amateur and professional level, including an original piece co-created with refugee youth, a play about town-gown relations in Duke and Durham, and a collection of true stories on the intersection of black and LGBTQ identities.
For his most recent work, The Bull City Dignity Project, he co-founded and directed a documentary theater production about Durham history, gentrification and activist movements. He, a fellow Duke student, and 10 area high school students interviewed community members and turned these interviews into a play performed at the Hayti Heritage Center and The Pinhook. His senior thesis this spring is an original play exploring the history of the U.S. prison system and its relation to racial and socioeconomic inequality.