Originally founded in 1993 with the help of the Ford Foundation, the Center in 1997 became a Minerva Center, together with its smaller sister-center at Tel Aviv University, with additional funding from the German Ministry for Education and Research through the Minerva Foundation.
The Center's projects include multidisciplinary international conferences, guest lectures, research groups and workshops; academic courses, student internships and study trips abroad; doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships; collaborative courses and research projects with other leading international academic institutions; and the Israel Law Review, a leading international journal of human rights, international and public law, published for the Center by Cambridge University Press.
The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem places great emphasis on the promotion of interaction between Israeli scholars and students and their international counterparts, and on generating awareness of, and discourse with, international academic reflection, historical experience and cultural perspectives. This includes, for example, recent joint projects with McGill University, Georgetown University, Free University of Berlin, European University Institute in Florence, University of Ulster, Goettingen University and the National University of Rwanda.
The Center brings to Jerusalem numerous leading international human rights scholars and practitioners to lecture at conferences and workshops, teach intensive courses or participate in research groups. In 2012 the list included over 40 senior scholars, judges, practitioners, postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, England, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.
The Center actively facilitates dialogue and cooperation between government, civil society and academia in Israel in understanding and addressing local human rights issues, and generating public debate of human rights issues and dilemmas – and is able to do so thanks to the high level of recognition and respect accorded the Center within each of these circles.
The Center also seeks to continue developing ties with Palestinian academics to assist in furthering cooperation, debate, coexistence and mutual awareness of human rights challenges and dilemmas in both societies.