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Basic needs insecurities affect university students disproportionately and may impact health and academic performance. This study examined associations between food insecurity (FI), housing insecurity (HI) and a novel basic needs insecurity score, and mental and physical health among university students. Eight-thousand undergraduate and postgraduate students at a large university in the southwestern U.S. were selected via stratified random sampling to complete an online cross-sectional survey in April 2021. The survey included the USDA 10-item food security module, a 9-item housing insecurity measure, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 screener (GAD-2), the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2) assessing depression, and self-rated health. Sociodemographics were self-reported and integrated from the university’s enterprise system. Multiple logistic regression was utilized to examine odds of depression, anxiety, and fair/poor health by food and housing security status. Multiple linear regression was utilized to examine predictors of food insecurity score (range = 0–10), housing insecurity score (range = 0–9), and an overall basic needs insecurity score (range = 0–19). Eight-hundred thirty-three students participated (response rate = 10.4%; mean age = 28.3 years, 66% female, 40% Hispanic, 60% undergraduates). Nearly 26% were food insecure in the past month and 44% were housing insecure in the past year. Basic needs insecurities significantly increased odds of anxiety (FI aOR = 4.35, HI aOR = 3.43), depression (FI aOR = 3.18, HI aOR = 3.16), and fair/poor health (FI aOR = 2.84, HI aOR = 2.81). GAD-2 score explained the most variance in food ( r -squared = 0.14), housing ( r -squared = 0.12), and basic needs insecurity scores ( r -squared = 0.16). Basic needs insecurities remain concerns among university students due to associations with mental and physical health, prompting a critical need for multifaceted interventions.

In recent years, researchers have increasingly focused on the experience of food insecurity among students at higher education institutions. Most of the literature has focused on undergraduates in the eastern and midwestern regions of the United States. This cross-sectional study of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at a Minority Institution in the southwestern United States is the first of its kind to explore food insecurity among diverse students that also includes data on gender identity and sexual orientation. When holding other factors constant, food-insecure students were far more likely to fail or withdraw from a course or to drop out entirely. We explore the role that higher education can play in ensuring students’ basic needs and implications for educational equity.

In recent decades, the interdisciplinary field of human rights studies has blossomed. Research on all aspects of human rights has proliferated across a wide range of academic fields, including the traditional disciplines of law and political science but also literature, history, economics, social work, business, and others. The range and quality of much of this scholarship-evidenced as much in the pages of the Journal of Human Rights as anywhere-reveals an active, sustained, and productive academic community advancing our understanding of the manifold discourses, structures, and practices of human rights. Alongside this scholarship, universities and colleges have also incubated human rights education programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels. Each semester, a growing number of students encounter human rights in their postsecondary education. What, how, and why human rights are taught at universities and colleges has yet to be systematically examined. This special issue takes up the question of human rights in higher education through a series of specific inquiries into how human rights education (HRE) is manifest in different kinds of academic and professional programs. The contributors represent a diverse range of perspectives, and each has been intimately engaged in the development, implementation, and analysis of educational programs. What these articles reveal is that HRE is happening in many colleges and universities, but much remains to be done if the promise of HRE is to be fully realized within higher education. Unleashing that potential will require building on some of the innovations documented here, as well as on sustained, critical inquiry into the curricula, pedagogies, and principles that have emerged as human rights has become a bona fide academic field. We frame these contributions within the larger context of the global HRE movement (Su arez 2007). The call for HRE began with the preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): "every individual and organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms." According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at least one hundred and eighty-eight international instruments (treaties, charters, and declarations) mention HRE directly or indirectly (OHCHR n.d.). The Convention on the Rights of the Child, for instance, requires states party to "make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike" (OHCHR 1989). Human rights were conceived, and remain, an educational-as well as legal and political-project.

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