Keith David Watenpaugh

An American historian and theorist of human rights and humanitarianism, Watenpaugh is an expert on genocide, and the role of the refugee and the forcibly displaced human in world history. He is a leader of international efforts to defend the human rights of displaced and refugee university students and scholars, primarily those affected by the wars and civil conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa.

Watenpaugh is the founding director of the UC Davis Human Rights Studies Program, the first academic unit of its kind in the University of California system. Under his leadership, it has grown to one of the largest programs in the nation encompassing a comprehensive interdisciplinary curriculum of over 20 undergraduate and graduate courses and home to a vital humanities-focused internship and global learning program. In 2024, over 80 UC Davis students majoring in History, English, Political Science, International Relations, and STEM and pre-Med fields graduated with Human Rights Minors. Among recent minors are Emma Tolliver, '23, winner of the top honor given by the College of Letters and Sciences, the Leon H. Mayhew Award and Brooke Morey, '24, winner of the University Medal, the highest honor UC Davis can bestow on an undergraduate.  

With support from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he wrote the multiple award-winning Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (California, 2015.)  Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton, 2006), his first book, pioneered the study of the middle class and non-Muslim minorities in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean.  His articles appear in the American Historical Review, Perspectives on History, Social History, Journal of Human Rights, Humanity, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of the Society of Armenian Studies, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Education. He has lived and worked in Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, Armenia, Iraq and Egypt and his writing has been translated in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and German.  Capital Public Radio frequently turns to him for commentary on war, refugees and violence in the Middle East.

He is currently at work on a new book - Sentinels of Exile: A Century of Refugee Thought on Statelessness and Belonging in the Middle East - to bring historical and contemporary refugee voices into conversation with the global history of political and social thought. With this book, he will establish the fundamental role of displaced Middle Eastern peoples in the theory and criticism of human rights and humanitarianism, and add to a growing body of humanitarian knowledge focused on confronting the multiple forms of refugee exclusion and abuse. 

Over 2020-2022 Watenpaugh was a UC Davis Public Scholarship and Engagement Fellow and held fellowships in public scholarship from both the Davis Humanities Institute and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. In cooperation with the History Project at UC Davis, he led a new project "Human Rights Studies for 21st Century Californians"  to support k-16 education and lifetime learning. In 2021 Human Rights Educators USA awarded him the Edward O'Brien Prize for Individual Achievement in Human Rights Education.  Read more in his recent interview "Public Scholarship for Peace."

Since 2013, Watenpaugh has directed an international multi-disciplinary research project to assist refugee university students and scholars fleeing the war. This project has garnered support from the Carnegie Corp. of New York, the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development.  He was awarded the Institute of International Education Centennial Medal for his efforts in 2019.

His team developed and deployed first in the Middle East (2017-, the Article 26 Backpack - The Universal Human Rights Ecosystem for Academic Mobility. Used by more than 5000 young people, scholars, and activists around the world, at its core, it promotes and defends the human right to education by providing a way to safely curate, protect, and share with universities, scholarship agencies, credential evaluation services, and even employers critical evidence of educational achievement, employment history, professional activities, and research. More important,Backpack builds connection and inclusion.

The digital platform is available in 8 languages: Arabic, Armenian, English, French, Persian, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian - and his team plans to add three more: Amharic, Swahili, and Burmese.

Listen to Watenpaugh talk about the origins of the Backpack idea and the role of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Human Rights and Humanitarian thought and policy or watch his Richard von Weizsäcker lecture delivered at the American Academy in Berlin, "Suffering, Compassion, and Responsible Scholarship about the Middle East.” 

Watenpaugh is collaborating with the MasterCard Foundation to deploy Backpack in Sub-Saharan Africa.  His team is working to connect young refugees and displaced people from Afghanistan and Ukraine, with it, as well. The team is exploring its use to support DACA recipients in the US.

Watenpaugh teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Human Rights, Genocide, and Humanitarianism. His graduate students come from Religion, Native American Studies, International Agricultural Development, History, and Cultural Studies. 

A father of twin teenagers, when not sailing his sloop Mutara Nebula II beyond the Golden Gate , he can found hiking the Sierras, Cascades or Olympics, fly fishing the headwaters of the Sacramento, listening to the Grateful Dead or watching Star Trek.