Social Issues
When Kim Weisensee Brown ’08, ’09 MS needed content creation help for her Chicago-based nonprofit, she turned to Northwestern to find an intern. To her surprise, she found the perfect fit more than 7,000 miles away: Benjamin Mwangi, a junior at Northwestern University in Qatar.
After learning that the majority of children’s books feature either white people or animals, Jacob Jordan ’20, ’21 MS launched the Equal Opportunity Book Box, a monthly subscription service that delivers picture books featuring characters of color, LGBTQIA characters, and/or characters with disabilities.
Thanks to a community of 174,380 alumni, parents and friends from around the world, We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern brought in an awe-inspiring $6.1 billion.
The Patrick ’59, ’09 H and Shirley Ryan ’61, ’19 H Family has given the largest single gift in University history to conclude the record-breaking “We Will” Campaign. The $480 million gift will accelerate breakthroughs in biomedical, economics and business research and enable Northwestern to construct a best-in-class athletics venue for the University community.
The effects of insufficient or poor-quality sleep go far deeper than our energy level the next morning. Sleep is a key component of our cardiovascular, metabolic and cognitive health, and at Northwestern, sleep research and circadian science — long regarded as disparate fields — come together to help us better understand how sleep can improve our health.
Increased financial aid has made a Northwestern education more accessible and ushered in a student population that is more diverse by almost every measure. More than $200 million in aid is awarded annually to thousands of undergraduates, and the University is one of just 19 institutions in the country that are need-blind in their admissions processes, meet full demonstrated financial need for domestic students and offer no-loan financial aid packages.
New works by Northwestern alumni challenge history, celebrate activists and uplift mundane, everyday moments.
Dwight White II’s new mural in the renovated Black House is about what you can see — and so much more.
This past summer, women’s tennis star Naomi Osaka and Olympic gymnast Simone Biles launched a movement in Black women’s mental health by choosing not to compete in order to care for their mental health. In this essay for Northwestern Magazine and in her recent book, professor Inger Burnett-Zeigler shows the other side of what strong Black women display to the outside world.
In 1983 Nedda Jefferson Simon opened Freedom House, a walk-in domestic and sexual violence shelter in Wyanet, Ill., a village two hours west of Chicago. Serving more than 30,000 survivors to date, the shelter has moved three times to expand its services.
