Research on the human rights movement emphasizes direct changes in nation-states, focusing on the efficacy of treaties and the role of advocacy in mitigating immediate violations. However, more than 140 universities in 59 countries established academic chairs, research centers, and programs for human rights from 1968-2000, a development that highlights the diffuse penetration of the social movement into core domains of society. We investigate this process with event history models, finding that countries embedded in the human rights regime and countries with dense civil society linkages to the human rights movement are particularly likely to develop a university human rights program. We also find that the structuration of the global human rights regime has an independent positive influence on the rate of country adoption, but national human rights violations, social unrest, and indicators of modernization or development are less salient. (Contains 13 notes, 1 figure, and 4 tables.)