Center for Social Concerns Newsletter | April 2024
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Army to anthropology to peace-and-justice research
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Postdoctoral fellow Helal Khan’s journey to becoming an anthropologist who researches peace and justice started with conversations he had with Rohingya refugees while he was serving in the Bangladesh Border Guard.
“That’s where I am now — soldier turned peacekeeper turned anthropologist turned peace-and-justice enthusiast,” he said.
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| Workshop focuses on virtues in the classroom
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The Center for Social Concerns hosted more than 30 faculty members from throughout North America for Integrating Virtue Together — a workshop designed to help professors weave virtue formation into all types of courses.
Workshop participants represented fields within business, engineering, the sciences, and the humanities.
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Center and Klau Institute join for racial justice course
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Racial Justice in America took students on the road during spring break to consider questions of racial justice while seeing the places where some of our nation’s most significant civil rights battles were fought.
The course is offered through a partnership between the Center for Social Concerns and the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights.
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Give $5 (or more) to support the Center
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For more than 40 years, the Center for Social Concerns has put research and education to work as a force for good. Support our mission by giving to the Center for Notre Dame Day.
Give $5 (or more) today or anytime through Wednesday, April 24.
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| Graduate Justice Fellows Celebration
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Our Graduate Justice Fellows have been busy! Join us for a celebration of their research. And if you’re also a graduate student, consider applying to be a fellow for 2024-25.
Friday, April 29, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Geddes Hall, McNeill Library
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A Conversation on Purpose
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Greg Jones, president of Belmont University, and Clayton Spencer, former president of Bates College, will discuss the ways that higher education can promote purpose.
Monday, May 13, noon–1:00 p.m., online via Zoom
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| 2024 Senior Send-Off and Reception
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Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, the CEO of Feeding America and recipient of the 2024 Notre Dame Laetare Medal, will join us as a featured guest to celebrate the Class of 2024.
Friday, May 17, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
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Application Open for Center’s Home Team
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Are you a student with a passion for promoting the Center for Social Concerns to your peers? Do you have a talent for putting on events? Apply to be a member of the Home Team!
Deadline to apply: Sunday, April 28
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| Nominate a Student for Center Awards
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Help us recognize students who have demonstrated a commitment to justice. Submit a nomination for the Sr. Thea Bowman Award and the Undergraduate Research Award.
Nominations due: Sunday, May 5
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Virtual Internship for Next Academic Year
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Apply to be an intern with the Alliance to End Human Trafficking. This paid, virtual position spans the academic year of 2024-25.
Deadline to apply: Friday, May 3
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| Justice Education Courses for Fall 2024
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Center for Social Concerns courses respond to the complex demands of justice by tackling questions of labor, mass incarceration, migration, poverty, and technology. One-credit and three-credit options available.
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Explore the Center for Social Concerns’ Minors
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Above: The Labor Café went on location March 22 with a special session, “Art and Labor,” in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. The discussion revolved around the ways that art speaks to our relationship with work and our relationship with nature.
Below, clockwise from left: Sr. Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, spoke with students on March 26 at a lunch hosted by the Catholic Social Tradition Minor. On April 5 at Signs of the Times, the City of South Bend’s diversity-and-inclusion officer Cynthia Simmons-Taylor talked about supporting women- and minority-owned businesses. Notre Dame Programs for Education in Prison held a book launch on April 11 for Unlocking Learning, a volume co-edited by Justin McDevitt, director of the Women’s College Partnership, and a panel discussion with Moreau College Initiative alumni.
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Women played an integral role in the founding of the Center for Social Concerns in the early ’80s, so we’re highlighting women who have been a part of the Center’s story and hearing about what they’re doing now.
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Brennan Bollman ’09 | New York, NY
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Dr. Brennan Bollman is an emergency physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She also engages in global health and humanitarian work, particularly through Doctors Without Borders.
As a Notre Dame student, her involvement with the Center for Social Concerns included spending one summer at Catholic Worker women’s shelter in Rochester, New York, spending another summer teaching world affairs to students in Cambodia, volunteering at the Sr. Maura Brannick Health Center in South Bend, supporting the 2008 ND Votes initiative, and serving on the Center for Social Concerns student advisory board.
In addition, she served as a research assistant in Notre Dame’s Haiti Program for the Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis, for which she conducted field work in Leogane and Port-au-Prince. She later took a leave of absence from Harvard Medical School to return to Haiti on behalf of the Notre Dame program after an earthquake devastated the country in 2010.
“Center for Social Concerns activities, and people, helped me think critically about justice problems,” she said. “Regardless of personal religiosity, I deeply appreciated learning the radical approach of liberation theology. Such focus on uniting the liberation of oppressed peoples with my own continues to inform the way I seek to approach my work, and life.”
Bollman said her experiences with the Center for Social Concerns have also helped keep her focused on her values and priorities in the midst of professional pressures.
“In my field, academic achievements — research, leadership, et cetera — are the currency of success, even as academia largely perpetuates an oppressive status quo,” she said. “Sometimes I admittedly stay on the hamster wheel. But formative experiences at the Center for Social Concerns serve as a reminder to also choose other — less prestigious but more authentic — paths.”
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