Lender Center for Social Justice Seeking Student Fellowship Applicants

Students from all academic disciplines are invited to apply to the 2023-25 Lender Center for Social Justice Student Fellowship Program.

The program will be led by Nausheen Husain, assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. She will direct five students in a public-facing research and writing project that analyzes American news coverage of U.S. war on terror policies, how those policies have affected communities, and the various ways individuals and organizations have resisted and responded to those policies and growth of the supporting government infrastructure.

Collaborators will include Nicole Nguyen, associate professor of criminology at University of Illinois Chicago, Muslim community-focused advocacy organizations and media analysis groups.

Selected fellows will spend two years on the project, receive a $2,000 stipend and have opportunities for additional funding. Research activities will include:

• Working with Husain and collaborators to design academic research on news coverage.
• Learning how to use oral history methods to conduct trauma-informed interviews with members of communities affected by war on terror policies.
• Researching and writing about resistance projects and movements that have developed during the past three decades of war on terror policies.
• Presenting research at the 2025 Lender Center for Social Justice Symposium.

Information Session Sept. 13

An information session will be held on Wednesday, Sept. 13, to provide student applicants with more details about the project’s components. It is scheduled for 1 p.m. in 207 Bowne Hall.

Applications Due Oct. 2

Program information is available on the student fellowship webpage. Students can apply through the online application portal. The application deadline is Monday, Oct. 2.

“We are looking for students from all academic disciplines who are passionate about news media, public messaging, community advocacy and social justice to apply for these fellowships,” Husain says. “This is an important and fascinating topic to study because it concerns some stark realities in American society. The war on terror is often framed as something that is over, but it’s not. The government infrastructure to keep it relevant to the public remains intact and its reach continues to expand, particularly globally.

“There has been resistance to these policies for decades; I think a huge and hopeful part of this project will be documenting those movements. We hope this project will shed some additional light on what is actually occurring in the war on terror arena today, how various segments of America are responding to it, and the value of added information and increased awareness regarding it.”