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“Resistance,” a spoken word piece by Mason alumnus Bobby Lacy II performed at Mason’s 2020 Winter Commencement, had a profound impact on those who saw it during the video broadcast.

Activism runs in Laila Mokhiber’s blood. Well before she became the director of communications at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA USA), Mokhiber was a child holding protest signs in human rights demonstrations. Before then, her mother held her as a baby in the gallery of the Supreme Court, as her father argued to incorporate Arab Americans into the Civil Rights Act in 1987. The ����AV alumna has also made a name for herself. In 2020, she was named one of the top 40 influential Arab Americans under 40 by the Arab America Foundation.

����AV hosted its third annual collegiate hackathon, PatriotHacks, the weekend of April 16. Nearly 350 students from all over the world spent 36 hours attending workshops, panels, and participating in technology activities and challenges.

The longitudinal study is an important effort seeking to improve the health of young adults.

The Reformation-era play “Luther’s Trumpet” poses provocative questions about faith justice, priestly celibacy and standing up against authoritarianism.

Students pursuing an MS in management through Mason’s School of Business usually spend four months getting work experience through internships at local companies. This year, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic, administrators had to think creatively. So instead, they asked local businesses what they thought of hiring students to do remote “researchships.”

With racial tension high in the United States, and the need for equity growing ever stronger, students and faculty at ����AV’s Antonin Scalia Law School participated in a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge virtually in March and April. The challenge, created by diversity expert Eddie Moore Jr., focuses on the Black American experience and is designed to advance deeper understandings of the intersections of race, power, privilege, and oppression, and guide participants in becoming more aware and engaged regarding racial equity.

Thank you, President Washington, for the invitation to speak today and for the honorary degree. This school is special to me for several reasons—many of my own students at NOVA transfer here.

The Class of 2021 will graduate on Friday, May 14.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it so most museums are closed, but students and researchers at ����AV’s John Mitchell, Jr. Program (JMJP) are working hard to create a digital one that sheds light on civil rights pioneers with largely untold stories. Thanks to an $8,000 grant from Virginia Humanities, the team is building a digital exhibit on the life of anti-lynching advocate John Mitchell, Jr., and his colleagues Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells. The grant is part of $181,500 in funding awarded to 25 nonprofits.

Graduating senior Nicole Herman said Mason made the world her campus.

While online meetings often feel confining, for ����AV students in INTS 304 Social Movements and Community Activism, the virtual environment actually opened doors for them.