Skip to main content

Social Issues

Louise Kiernan’s reporting at the Cook County juvenile court profoundly changed her understanding of journalism and how she wanted to approach it. She says journalism education at its best brings us into the places and lives that transform the way we think about the world.

Read about Louise Kiernan

my northwestern direction louise kiernan
Growing up in a Milwaukee housing project, Patty Loew didn’t meet many other Native American people. A member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, Loew would occasionally spend summers on a reservation with relatives, but it wasn’t until her late teens that she started developing a connection to her Native identity.

Read the story

native scholar patty loew medill journalism
Last summer international aid workers began descending from Soviet-era helicopters into the forests, mountains and villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu region, setting up treatment centers and laboratories, and donning hazmat suits as they treated people sick with the Ebola virus. The workers brought computers, lab equipment, vaccine doses and anything else that supported epidemiology, data and patient management, and infection prevention and control.

Read the story

ebola clinic
Lake Michigan, the immense body of fresh water whose shimmering beauty convinced Northwestern’s founders that this was the place to build the University, has been under threat since the early 20th century. Northwestern researchers, students and alumni are discovering solutions for water quality issues and climate change challenges in the Great Lakes region.

Read the story

lake michigan sunrise opener
In fall 2018 New York Times investigative reporter Barstow and his colleagues Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner wrapped up an 18-month investigation into President Donald Trump’s personal finances.The investigative pieces earned Barstow and his colleagues the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. It is Barstow’s fourth Pulitzer.

Read the story

david barstow pulitzer prize ceremony
Although Generation Z — kids born after 1996 — is in some ways just forming its identity, the group is already shaping our society, says Northwestern anthropologist Shalini Shankar. In her new book, Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal About Generation Z’s New Path to Success, Shankar interviews spelling bee participants and their parents to understand what insights the competition can offer into the characteristics of Gen Z.

Read the story

spellingbee atman
Members of the Chicago-area Native American community and representatives of Sand Creek Massacre descendants gathered on campus to share reflections at a bonfire and a panel discussion.

Read the story

sand creek moment
Now, perhaps more than ever, it is critical that we continue the LGBTQ movement’s fight for recognition and representation. The health of our community depends on it.

Read the story

brian mustanski
The number of people crossing the border is at an all-time high, and the U.S. needs these policies to curb the flow of migrants crossing the southern border.

Read the story

barbed wire migrants
Five floors up from the cacophony that is Chicago’s West Loop, inside a stone-still hearing room at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Chicago Immigration Court, where the ratcheted-up nerves and quickened breaths make for the sort of place you do not want to be, Uzoamaka Emeka Nzelibe ’96 is there to get the job done.

Read the story

uzoamaka opener col