By Carl Burkart, Director of Student Success and Development  

  

We spoke with Jenny Mincin, Assistant Professor in the School of Health and Human Services, about her scholarship, her teaching, and her work with Human Rights and crisis organizations. Dr. Mincin has a Ph.D. in social welfare from the Hunter College School of Social Work, City University of New York. For over 20 years she has worked with government and non-profit organizations on issues ranging from emergency management, mental health access, and refugee resettlement.  

The interview below has been edited for clarity and brevity.  

  

Why are human rights important? 
  

Jenny Mincin: I think that when people hear the term human rights or think about human rights, they're looking at it from maybe a legal perspective or a really narrow focus. But the reality is our basic human rights are something that are critical for each of us in terms of being able to live and thrive the way that we want to. So, for example, if we can't access certain things, and that includes everything from education to health care to clean water to food and safety, it becomes really hard to be able to function in your community. So, human rights are one of the most fundamental aspects of our being, in a way. Fighting for our freedoms and for access and for basic human rights, in my opinion, there's no greater purpose than that.  

  

How did you get involved in working with in studying human rights issues? 
  

Jenny Mincin: I think that I always was interested in vulnerable populations in particular, and I always wanted to think about how we look at things from a systems perspective and also service delivery. By nature, I'm just somebody who likes to be out in the field doing direct service. Even here at SUNY Empire, working with the students for me is the most important thing. Before I became a full- time professor, I really loved being in the field, working directly with people. Intellectually. I had a real interest in systems and policies and how programs work, but always thought, ‘Well, if we if we have the evidence that shows how we can help people in the social services and in the human services field, why don't we implement them?’ So really doing critical analysis and figuring out how to implement better, evidence-based programs was kind of a real intellectual and practical curiosity for me.  

  

I started out in the early 90s, doing HIV counseling on the lower east side of Manhattan and that was really ground zero of the AIDS epidemic back then. All of our patients died, and it was really a very challenging time and that for me was my first introduction into crisis work and then also in into human rights advocacy. We were letting people die over stigmas and not seeing them as actual people. And that's why I'm saying human rights is more than a concept. It's about our ability to live and thrive. And it's about our ability to be able to help each other, care for each other. And so, I think I just sort of caught that bug early on. I suppose my career sort of flowed from there. A lot of the times, I found myself doing disaster work. I went overseas to South America and then when I came back, I went to Columbia for my undergrad and then I did my first masters at the School of International Public Affairs. I continue to stay focused on social policy issues, environmental racism, so intellectually, I always focused on the systems aspect of human rights and social services. And then I was in practice on the ground, really looking at providing services and helping people to access services. From there I just ended up in in domestic and international emergency management as a vulnerable population specialist. That really allowed me to be in the field and to integrate my expertise working with vulnerable populations like refugees and asylees and people with disabilities. Those were my primary areas that I worked in, and I was good at doing crisis work. I did a lot of response and recovery and that became my primary focus. From there I worked at the International Rescue Committee and then I got my PhD in Social Work from Hunter College School social work. I had a lot of really wonderful mentors along the way because the work is really hard and sometimes in the international field there's a bit of elitism. Finding mentors who had similar paths to me but that were further along in their careers made a huge difference in how I wanted to engage in in my work. 

 

Tell us about your current scarlet scholarly work. What are you working on now? 
  

Jenny Mincin: I'm just wrapping up three years of doing pretty intensive qualitative research with refugees and asylees, and I have a couple of articles that just came out around that time, primarily looking at mental health issues and resilency among refugees and asylees. And then I did publish one article on COVID and mental health issues with refugees and asylum, really looking at how COVID disrupted newly arrived refugees’ ability to access services. They're coming from areas where their rights are being trampled, and so they're coming here legally and trying to start over and then COVID hits and they became further isolated and very confused. A lot of the messaging around COVID was confusing. These are the little connector areas where working really hard to get proper information to vulnerable populations in a crisis becomes really critical because if they're being told misinformation, then they're not going be able to access proper care, which puts their lives at risk. 

  

I'm also working on a book right now that looks at disaster recovery. Part of the reason I love looking at response and recovery is because those are the areas where you can actually start to make a significant impact, by looking at how systems can work anew post disaster and really help communities to shore up around resiliency and community building. You can help to build up communities better after disasters and you can help to reinforce resiliency models and advocacy and all of those things are really critical to human rights. 

  

What kind of courses do you teach at SUNY Empire? 
  

Jenny Mincin: I teach a lot of the core human services courses like case management, human services and special needs populations, social welfare policy, and history of social welfare. I do a lot of policy work as well. That's the kind of macro stuff I enjoy. But I also teach Crisis Intervention I and II, Disaster Mental Health, Disaster and Human Services, and Refugees and Displaced Populations, and a lot of courses on PTSD and trauma, so those are my primary areas of expertise. 
 
Since COVID, I moved a number of my study groups to virtual study groups and I've just been maintaining that because I'm finding that students can come home at 5 or 5:30, take care of what they need to from work, and then by 6 o'clock log on virtually.  The thing that's been really nice about it is that students from all over New York state are also joining in in the classroom, and so students get to interact with other students. Even though it's our heads on a camera, we're still interacting live, and we're doing breakout rooms to do role playing and practice different crisis skills or to look at case studies. We can do a lot of the same things that we do in person in the classroom. Virtually, it's different, but we can still do it and get the same benefits. In addition, they're interacting with students from all over New York State. In in fact this term I have one student who is located in Europe and that's been really fantastic because it just allows for all these different perspectives and students get to share about where they live, their own communities or own backgrounds. And I just think it brings a richness to it. So, I'm going to continue to do virtual study groups into the spring. I have refugees and displaced populations and disaster mental health as the two virtual study groups. 

  

Can you tell us a little bit about the crisis intervention certificate program that you helped develop? 

  

Jenny Mincin: Sure, it’s really exciting. We just launched it, so it's live now and up and running. It is a five-course series: Crisis intervention I and II, Secondary Trauma in Human Service Workers, and Bereavement Counseling. Those four courses are the core of the certificate and then the 5th course is an elective you can choose from Disaster Mental Health or Conflict in Human Services, so you can integrate this certificate into your actual degree plan. The other nice thing about it is that It's interdisciplinary, so you do not have to be Human Services major to do it. You could be in public affairs and take it, you can be in nursing and take it and get your crisis certificate. It's one of those things that really can help students in a lot of different career paths. I've spoken to folks who do security for big corporations and getting a crisis certificate is incredibly helpful for them because learning how to deescalate before you actually move into more aggressive postures is a critical skill and understanding some of the psychology behind crises can help a lot of security folk figure out how to secure and prevent rather than letting things escalate. It's a very cool program because it is interdisciplinary in its design. 

Human Rights Day is celebrated on December 10. See https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day for more information.