Though the keynote talk in the Oak Fellowship Presentations on Human Rights had to be cancelled, the fall series of lunchtime talks was heralded as a great success. Ten programs were scheduled, all discussing human rights issues in various parts of the world.     The idea to dedicate the College's annual Social Sciences and Humanities Colloquium Series this semester to discussions of human rights was conceived by Julie de Sherbinin, assistant professor of Russian and colloquium organizer, and Ken Rodman, chair of the Government Department and director of the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights.     They reasoned that the traditional colloquium series would be a good forum for the first Oak Human Rights Fellow, journalist Zafaryab Ahmed, to talk to faculty members about his work in Pakistan. Unfortunately Ahmed's October 30 talk, "Human Rights in Pakistan," had to be cancelled because he is still unable to leave his country (see From the Hill). But the rest of the schedule--seven talks by Colby faculty and two by visiting lecturers --not only advanced awareness of human rights, the talks attracted bigger than normal crowds and expanded the audience beyond faculty members to include students and community members.     The Social Science and Humanities Colloquium series was begun about 10 years ago by Associate Professor of History James Webb to give professors opportunities to share their research interests with colleagues. de Sherbinin said that, while she has worked for human rights with Amnesty International for about 20 years and has served as advisor of Colby's Amnesty group since arriving on campus in 1993, initially she doubted that there was enough research about human rights going on at Colby to sustain the idea through an entire semester of weekly lunches.     When she started asking colleagues, however, many were enthusiastic. Jeffery Anderson, an anthropologist, got the series off to a strong start in September talking about one of his primary areas of interest--American Indian human rights issues. Anderson will again teach Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples as a Jan Plan course this year. Rodman, an expert on international sanctions, discussed non-governmental sanctions against South Africa, Burma and Nigeria in a talk titled "Think Globally, Punish Locally."     Historian Raffael Scheck gave a historical perspective on human rights in Bosnia-Hercegovina. de Sherbinin said that although Bosnia-Hercegovina is outside of Scheck's primary interests, he decided that there was insufficient knowledge of the circumstances and on his own initiative did a superb job researching and explaining the situation.     Other programs on the schedule included sociologist Mary Beth Mills on migrant youth and labor rights in Thailand, Jennifer Yoder (government) comparing transitional justice in post-communist Germany and post-apartheid South Africa, Ariel Armony (government) on documenting human rights violations in Argentina and economist Jan Hogendorn on the abolition of slavery in Africa.     Rounding out the semester, Cindy Mahmood of the University of Maine talked about violence in the Punjab, and Steve Angle of Wesleyan University talked about rights in China.     "It turned into a very strong series," de Sherbinin said.     Perhaps more important, the success of the unified colloquia showed how the Oak Foundation endowment, which also funds the Oak fellowship and several scholarships for victims of human rights abuses, already is helping to move human rights to center stage at Colby.     The College also has a Colby-Oak Foundation international scholarship program that has a special focus on students who have or whose familes have suffered political oppression including political torture.