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Politics

We’re all generating an exponential amount of data all the time, and the ability to connect the dots between those bits of data is cause for concern. Northwestern alumni who work in privacy protection agree that comprehensive federal legislation is needed to set reasonable expectations for individual data protection rights and to harmonize the growing patchwork of state rules that protect only a subset of the population.

Learn five tips to protect your privacy

Privacy Opener
Cody Keenan ’02 spent eight years as a White House speechwriter for President Barack Obama ’06 H. Now a visiting professor at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Keenan talked with Northwestern Magazine about his start in politics, what he learned from the former president and what gives him hope.

Learn more about Keenan

Cody and Obama
Isabella Twocrow interned for 10 weeks with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, working alongside some of the most important decision-makers when it comes to Native American life, including Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland. “They’re the people protecting tribal sovereignty through policymaking,” says Twocrow, who is Oglala Lakota and a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and co-chair of Northwestern’s Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance.

Learn more about Twocrow

Isabella and Deb orig
Is the era of the foreign correspondent over? That’s the premise behind a new media venture spearheaded by Justin Smith, the former Bloomberg Media chief executive, and Ben Smith, the former editor of BuzzFeed.

Read Cohen’s essay

Voices Deborah Cohen
David Ellis ’93 JD is not only the youngest-serving justice on the Illinois Appellate Court — he’s also a bestselling crime novelist. Inspired by the courtroom drama he’s observed throughout his career, Ellis has written a number of bestsellers and says he owes his legal and writing success to his law school experience.

Learn about Ellis

CU David Ellis
After 19 years of incarceration, Corzell Cole was released from Stateville Correctional Center in March 2022. He and his lead attorney, Shelisa Thomas ’19, reflect on their work together and Cole’s goals for the future.

Learn more from Cole and Thomas

ATT Shelisa Thomas and Corzell
After watching the footage of George Floyd’s murder, digital artist Lo Harris drew a digital art piece to express her frustration with police killings of Black people. Her artwork took Instagram by storm — and now she’s encouraging others to raise their voices too.

Read her story

Lo Harris portrait
For six years, journalist and professor Thrasher followed the case of Michael Johnson, a gay Black man in St Louis who was sentenced in 2015 to more than 30 years in prison for not disclosing his HIV-positive status to his sexual partners. Thrasher has reported on policing, LGBTQ rights, racism and HIV/AIDS for more than a decade, pursuing controversial stories and even helping change the law.

Get to know Thrasher

Thrasher photo collage
When Natalie Y. Moore ’99 MS started writing The Billboard, her new play about reproductive rights, in 2018, she never imagined that the script might hit the stage in a post-Roe world.

Read the story

Billboard Play Image SH
The advance of science and technology has brought remarkable gains over the last two centuries. But how do we measure the importance of research and the return on R&D investment?

Read an essay from Jones

voices ben jones