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Social Issues

Matt Houchin is breaking records by wearing a Hard Rock Café T-shirt every day in 2024, all in the name of charity. His Hard Rock Shirt-a-thon is raising money for the nonprofit Free Guitars 4 Kids.

Follow Houchin’s journey

Matt Houchin, wearing a white bathrobe, stands at a table covered in Hard Rock Café T-shirts, ironing one of the shirts.
Beau Tremitiere, counsel at Protect Democracy, is working to restore election integrity and push for more representative and responsive government.

Read Tremitiere’s essay

Beau Tremitiere sits on a ledge in front of a cement building with his arms resting on his thighs and his hands clasped as he looks off into the distance. He is wearing a black suit with a light blue dress shirt.
Inspired by her son, Isidoro, who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, Annah Abetti Korpi is working to make school playgrounds inclusive for children with disabilities. Korpi began a campaign that raised nearly $365,000 to finance a playground renovation at her son’s school, Alexander Elementary School, in Albany, Ohio.

Read about Korpi’s mission

Annah Abetti Korpi smiles into the camera as she crouches next to her son, Isidoro Korpi, who sits in a wheelchair. There is a playground in the background. Annah is wearing a gray shirt with pink, red, blue and yellow stripes and Isidoro is wearing a gray T-shirt and blue pants.
An accomplished scholar of European and global history, Deborah Cohen has led the Northwestern Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs since January 2024. During this time, her team has launched a raft of programs that build on the institute’s mission of fostering interdisciplinary teaching and research about the world beyond U.S.

Learn more

Deborah Cohen smiles at the camera in front of a blue background. She wears a purple shirt, a dark blue jacket and glasses.
Our alumni will travel the world for a scoop. Meet the foreign correspondents, filmmakers and producers who are shining lights on stories from India, Colombia, Israel, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Learn about their work

Josh Lederman stands in a desert landscape in Gaza. He is wearing a blue denim shirt, black pants, and a black bulletproof vest labeled ‘PRESS’ on the front.
Harris Forbes ’19 serves as associate producer and postproduction supervisor for America in Black. Produced by CBS News in partnership with BET News, the show airs monthly and covers a range of stories about Black America, from profiles of prominent movers and shakers to deep dives into the Black maternal health crisis and the fight to teach Black history in schools.

Read about Forbes’ work

The words BET News Presents America in Black are displayed on a black background.
The voices of people incarcerated in Illinois are rarely heard outside their institutions’ walls. Students in the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP) are changing that.

Find out more

Four men in blue polo shirts and dark blue pants sit at desks in a classroom, listening to a teacher who is sitting at a desk across from them, wearing a gray shirt and dark gray pants. In the background there is a chalkboard and television.
Stage adaptations of books, movies and even music albums are nothing new. But this spring Christina Rosales ’11 brought an unusual production to Northwestern’s Wirtz Center Chicago: a stage adaptation of a video game.

Read the story

Two characters from the show Dot’s Home Live converse onstage. On the left is Mr. Murphy, a white man wearing a brown suit jacket and tan slacks and holding a black folder. On the left is Dot, a Black woman wearing a red top and white pants, pointing her finger at Mr. Murphy.
In May, Northwestern sent six student representatives to join the Ocean Plastics Recovery Project. The students spent a week under the Alaskan early summer sun near Prince of Wales Island, where they cleared beaches of 15,000 pounds of marine debris.

Read more about the field trip

The research vessel Island C serves as a mother ship and platform for the Ocean Plastics Recovery Project's collection expeditions in southwest Alaska. The white vessel is anchored in open water. There is a small vessel tethered to the larger boat. Crew members wear yellow jackets. here are snow-capped mountains in the background.
Co-founded by Andrew Youn ’06 MBA, ’19 H, One Acre Fund is a nonprofit that provides training and equipment to 4 million farm families across nine countries in eastern and southern Africa.

Read Youn’s essay

A black and white pencil-drawn illustration of Andrew Youn wearing rectangular glasses and smiling at the viewer.