Political Science Weekly Newsletter

[NEW] THIS WEEK Alum Connection Q&A with Political Science alum and Pixar Studios VP Jody Weinberg

Friday, September 16, 4:30-5:30pm
2080 LSA Building

You never know what an internship experience can teach you. Jody Weinberg (‘91 English & Political Science) credits internships with testing her interests and ultimately discovering her passion for law. Her résumé reads like a diverse list of internship opportunities that students across LSA may pursue, interning at places like a county government, a governmental legal department with public counsel supporting victims of a race uprising, at the Marshal’s office of the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the legal department at an entertainment company that is the predecessor of NBCUniversal. Today, she is Vice President of Business Affairs and Legal Counsel at Pixar Animation Studios. In this Alum Connection, Jody will shed light on what she learned navigating different legal environments and how these internships supplemented the excellent education she got at LSA and Pepperdine University. Join us to hear her story and to ask your questions about launching a career in law.

RSVP NOW to be part of the conversation. The link to join this Alum Connection will be emailed to you after you RSVP. For more information on Jody and the Alum Connections event, visit the Opportunity Hub's website. Alum connections are informal, come-as-you-are, hour-long Q&A sessions where LSA students can ask anything.

[NEW] THIS WEEK Turn Up Turnout Dinners for Democracy

Multiple Dates and Locations

Throughout the month of September, TUT has Dinners for Democracy planned on a variety of topics, both in-person and virtual. These in-person events are hosted in the multicultural lounges of dorms, and are only open to residents of those dorms (this information is noted on the graphic attached), but virtual events are open to all students, and students from all majors and grade levels are encouraged to attend. Attendees of virtual events will receive a $15 gift card to a local restaurant. Attendees of in-person events will receive dinner on-site, during the event.

September Dinners for Democracy:

9/15 at 7pm on the Politics of Renewable Energy on Zoom
9/19 at 5:30 pm on Voting Access on Zoom
9/21 at 7pm on the Judicial System in the Bursley MCL
9/27 at 5:30pm on Voting Access in the East Quad MCL
9/29 at 7pm on the Judicial System in the Stockwell MCL

[NEW] THIS WEEK In the Studio with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
Friday, September 16, 2-6pm and by appointment
Institute for the Humanities Gallery, 1st floor of the South Thayer Building

Brooklyn artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is in residence on campus this month, working with Black, brown, queer, and women-identifyng students and listening to their stories about the way they experience race and gender on campus. If you'd like to share your story with her, sign up here. If no times are available or you can't make it during the open studio, please email Tatyana (tlynnfaz@gmail.com) or curator Amanda Krugliak (mandak@umich.edu) about setting up another time.

Pressed Against My Own Glass, exhibition
September 15-October 21, 2022
Location: Institute for the Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer
Gallery Hours: M-F 9am-5pm (open until 8pm on Sept. 15)
free and open to the public

In this multimedia installation on Black womanhood within the home space, Fazlalizadeh explores her childhood and adulthood within the domestic space and how it connects to the experiences of other Black women and those who had a girlhood. Using paintings, drawings, video, and reappropriated home objects, she examines her experiences of joy, rest, sadness, and fellowship in the home. While doing so, she makes connections to her Black women peers, even those like Breonna Taylor and Atatiana Jefferson who show how racist violence is a threat to Black women even in their homes.

To Be Heard, public mural project
September 28-October 16, 2022
Locations: Angell Hall, Trotter Multicultural Center, Modern Languages Building, Shapiro Library

Brooklyn-based street artist, painter, and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh will utilize community engagement, public art, and social practice to listen to and amplify the voices of marginalized groups, particularly women and non-white students at U-M. Through class workshops and interviews, Fazlalizadeh will engage with Black and brown, queer, and women-identified students on the ways that they experience race and gender on campus, exploring how students are treated based on their identities. The engagement will culminate in four oversized murals to be installed on Angell Hall, the Modern Languages Building, Shapiro Undergraduate Library, and Trotter Multicultural Center. There will also be several cutouts of life-size drawings posted in the ground on central campus.

Opening Reception
Tatyana Fazlalizadeh in conversation with Curator Amanda Krugliak
September 15, 6:30-8pm
Institute for the Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer
free and open to the public

Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series
“To Be Heard: Public Art Interventions” by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
September 28, 5:30-7pm
Rackham Amphitheatre, 915 E. Washington
free and open to the public

Beyond Militarism Conference (Online Attendance Available)
September 22-23

In the 21st century, when we are said to be living in unprecedented times, what does it take to make war? Visions conflict as to the future of war, and what it means to be at war now. At the same time as “great-power competition” is widely considered resurgent, war has become global in seemingly new ways with the integration of technologies and tactics that trouble conventional distinctions between war and peace. Growing interconnectivity seems to herald a new complexity. However, the patterns and long continuities of state violence raise questions about what might be obscured through such claims of newness. What, if anything, is new in the new new wars? What does it take to make war seem foreign, and who gets to be “outside” of war, unimplicated in the violence of the state? What, if anything, remains untouched by this violence?

This two-day conference aims to prompt a fresh reckoning with the very foundations necessary for making, and making sense of, war, empire, peace, and security in the present. Critical scholars increasingly recognize the artificiality of divides inherent in many accounts of state violences – for instance, between the “domestic” and the “foreign.” However, challenges remain in untangling how state violences work through both the highly particular and local, and through broader global systems of power.

This conference proceeds from a place of critical and interdisciplinary reckoning with such divisions, with an emphasis on exercises of power that structure the very socio-political. What could happen if we set aside comfortable frames: if we “forgot militarization,” as Alison Howell has urged (2018), or if we looked beneath the presumptions built into concepts like militarism? Interrogation of police and military violence have troubled distinctions made between the two (Schrader 2019; Estes 2019; Singh 2017; Gouldhawke 2020; Manso 2016; Seigel 2017) and raised questions fundamental to any analysis of war. How and why is state violence organized, how is it justified, and why does it take the forms it does? How might the answers to these questions change? What might be made visible with a re-cognition and centering of the fundamentals of war and the “military” and the range of violences of the present: of empire, settler colonialism, police, race, gender, the “human”?

And if state violences "[tie] our fates together" (Paik 2017, 18), how do people take hold of such connections to resist, create, and envision another world? How might abolitionism as a "praxis of creativity" (Rodríguez 2019, 1612) provide ways into thinking and acting otherwise at a time when war - in whatever forms it may take - is so deeply integrated into the everyday?

Venue: Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge and online.
The venue is fully accessible and the conference will be held on the ground floor.

Registration is now open for the Beyond Militarism conference, held at the University of Cambridge and online via zoom: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-militarism-tickets-405856617067.
For more information and to see the provisional conference program, please visit https://www.sociology.cam.ac.uk/events/beyond-militarism.

[NEW] Field Organizer for League of Conservation Voters

Riverside Organizing is hiring enthusiastic Field Organizers on behalf of its client the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) for their large-scale, membership mobilization program, GreenRoots, to recruit LCV’s membership to volunteer and help elect LCV Action-Fund endorsed Senate and House candidates. The position is a part of a nationwide team driving volunteer capacity into 15 key states. Field Organizers will recruit, train and empower LCV members to volunteer on behalf of LCV Action-Fund endorsed candidates through phone calls and digital organizing tools, including peer-to-peer texting and other in-person and virtual volunteer activities. Field Organizers will work alongside a team of organizers and a Regional Field Director on the project to activate LCV’s members and will be based out of a campaign office.

Successful candidates have at least one cycle of community, issue, labor, or political organizing, excellent communication and organizational skills, ability to build relationships in-person and remotely, reliable transportation, and must work well in a team. The position requires extensive volunteer recruitment, including phone banking, text banking, and volunteer training and management, a laptop, and a willingness to work evening and weekend hours. Riverside employees will abide by CDC guidelines.

Responsibilities:

Utilize digital tools and databases including, phone banking, text banking and 1:1 meetings to recruit, mobilize and train a diverse group of LCV members statewide to make phone calls, send texts and write letters to elect LCV Action Fund endorsed candidates.
Track all volunteer outreach and engagement in VAN and submit daily reports.
Plan and execute organizing actions, events and trainings, including phone banks, text banks, virtual LCV member meetings and letter writing events.
Develop relationships with Coordinated Campaign partners, and other progressive leaders in the community and work with them on events and activities.

Skills and Experience:

Strong written and oral communication skills.
Ability to prioritize and effectively manage multiple tasks in a fast-paced work environment.
Successful experience working with teams representing a rich mix of talent, backgrounds and perspectives.
1+ cycles of electoral campaign experience, community, issue, labor or political organizing, a plus.
Fluency in VAN, Microsoft Office Suite; other field and digital tools, a plus.
Experience or residency in program states, a plus.

Cultural Competency:

Share a commitment to continued learning and the cultural competency to increase racial diversity in our movement.
Integrating justice and equity into the work we do and creating an inclusive team culture.
Have a passion for protecting communities most impacted by climate change and environmental injustice.

Work hours vary from standard office hours and include Saturdays. Laptop and reliable internet a must.

Pay and Duration: This position is full-time, salaried, and temporary through November 15, 2022. Pay is $3,475 a month, plus a $300 month for cell/internet untaxed stipend, healthcare is offered, as well as a $575 signing bonus to be paid at the end of each month employed ($230/month).

Riverside Organizing is an equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace.

Application Deadline: The initial deadline to apply is September 20th however they will continue accepting applications after September 20th on a rolling basis.
APPLY HERE!

[NEW] The Bert and Phyllis Lamb Prize in Political Science

[NEW] U-M Effective Altruism - Intro Fellowship

UMich Effective Altruism is excited to announce our Intro Fellowship, a semester-long seminar program for students who want to make the world a better place. You’ll discuss problems like global poverty, factory farming, and risks from emerging technologies, as well as promising strategies for working on them. Along the way, you’ll consider ideas from the effective altruism movement and criticisms of these ideas, with the goal of developing your own informed opinions and beliefs about the best ways to help. Apply by Friday, September 16th!

[NEW] Michigan Sierra Club
The Michigan Sierra Club is hiring for 2 positions:

Building Electrification and Healthy Communities campaign representative: we seek a dedicated campaigner to lead our statewide and local advocacy toward achieving an equitable transition away from fossil fuels in our homes/buildings and mitigating energy burden for disproportionately impacted communities. This position is union-represented by the Progressive Workers Union with a salary up to $68,500, health benefits, a 401k, paid vacation, and sick time. For the full job description and application details, click here: https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf01/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=SIERRACLUB&cws=42&rid=2067

Detroit/Metro Clean Energy and Healthy Communities organizer: We are seeking an experienced community organizer with a strong commitment to building power with communities to address utility costs, increase building electrification, reduce pollution and create a just and equitable clean energy economy. This position is union represented by the Progressive Workers Union with a salary of $65,000, health benefits, a 401k, paid vacation, and sick time. For the full job description and application details, click here: https://phf.tbe.taleo.net/phf01/ats/careers/v2/viewRequisition?org=SIERRACLUB&cws=39&rid=1988

[NEW] Turkish Translation and Proofreading Research Assistant

Turkish speaking students are encouraged to reach out to Irene Morse (imorse@umich.edu) for this Research Assistant opportunity.

Give Merit's FATE Program Mentorship

Are you looking for a volunteer opportunity that engages youth in Detroit? If so, Give Merit’s mentorship program, FATE, is looking for University of Michigan students to become mentors!

FATE is a four-year, cohort-based program for high school students in Detroit who attend the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy. Its mission is to provide resources and opportunities for Detroit youth to embrace education and become world-class citizens, with a goal to motivate each student to graduate high school and attend college.

The four-year cohort-based program provides innovative programming which blends project-based learning, character development, career exposure, and mentorship into a co-curricular experience emphasizing the value of education and the role it plays in providing access to achieving long term career and personal goals.

Mentors help facilitate workshop activities where students learn skills in business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and design-thinking while also supporting their mentees as they develop personally and professionally. The curriculum is complemented by ongoing soft-skill building activities and regular excursion workshops with community partners such as Zingerman’s, Google, Carhartt, and Plante Moran.

Check out this video to learn more about the FATE Program!

If you are interested in mentoring for the FATE Program during the 2022-2023 academic year, email Give Merit’s Program Success Director, Rachel Mazzaro, at rmazzaro@meritgoodness.com for more information!

Undergraduate Journal of Public Health

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