Comparative cultures and politics and Arabic senior Margaret Born and Joel Arnold, James Madison College and College of Social Science alumnus who graduated in 2015, have been selected as Mitchell Scholars.
The George Mitchell Scholarship honors former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who was influential in the peace process in Northern Ireland and serves to maintain connections between Ireland and future American leaders.
The scholarship is awarded to American students and covers a year of graduate study at one of 11 Irish universities. For 2016-17, two of the universities are not available for study.
“They invited 80 (applicants) for semifinal interviews,” Arnold said. “Of those 80 who were invited for semifinal interviews, 20 were invited back to Washington, D.C. for finalist interviews.”
When the 12 winners were chosen, Arnold and Born became the second and third MSU students ever to receive the Mitchell Scholarship.
While grades are important, students who earn the Mitchell Scholarship are selected for their ability to carry on George Mitchell’s legacy, Born said.
“The Mitchell is looking for an outstanding activist, someone who puts their actions behind their thoughts,” she said. “That so much aligns with everything I believe in.”
Born, who will be studying international development, environment and conflict at Dublin City University, said Ireland itself will be an excellent resource.
“Ireland is one of the few places in the world that is a complete intersection of all these perspectives,” she said. “It was colonized and occupied, and at the same time it is attached to the privilege and wealth of Europe. It has the perspective of a western country but at the same time of a postcolonial one.”
Arnold also believes that Ireland is a good location for his studies.
“Dublin is different than the countryside, and different than some of the smaller towns, so it really provides a rich environment to study public policy,” he said.
Born and Arnold both said their childhoods influenced the fields in which they plan to work.
“I grew up in the Flint area, and so that’s really been kind of a big part of my life,” Arnold said. “How do communities hit really hard by economic challenges adapt to changes, reshape themselves?”
Born credits her interest in helping refugees and other displaced peoples to her childhood spent abroad.
“I grew up in post-war Mozambique, which is in southeastern Africa,” she said. “It’s been really powerful for me to see the ways in which people move on after conflict and rebuild. I want to be a part of that resolution, renewal, rebuilding.”
Born said she now hopes to find a career in which she can continue to work with refugees and displaced people and make policy more responsible to their needs.
“The average time a refugee spends in a camp is 17 years. For the vast majority of refugees, they’re standing in these camps waiting for something to give, for something to change, for decades,” she said. “We need to be more cognizant of what’s really happening to these people and what their experiences really are, and then make sure that we’re responding to the needs of the many as best we can.”
Arnold and Born look forward to continuing their studies in Ireland, but also to what they hope to achieve afterward.
“Our talents are only useful insofar as we use them to improve the lives of people around us,” Arnold said.
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