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Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day, DMC friends and supporters! We are grateful for another week of progress and persistence at our center. Today's newsletter spotlights our ongoing blog series and aspirations for the year ahead at the DMC.
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Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Message of Peace
A note from center director Samuel R. Staley, PhD
Perhaps at no other time in our recent history has Martin Luther King, Jr.’s teaching been more relevant. Many of us view Dr. King as the most visible, and perhaps most iconic, figure in the modern Civil Rights Movement.
Indeed, he was. But we sometimes forget that his message was much broader than addressing injustice or political oppression. His sermons carried enduring messages of peace, individual respect, and the critical role nonviolent political expression plays in fostering social change. He and other leaders carried this message into their everyday practice. And the results were significant, meaningful, and enduring.
I cannot think of a time in recent memory when Dr. King’s message of peace and nonviolence was as important. We have endured nearly a year of politically motivated violence, unprecedented in modern U.S. history. This violence tore apart our cities last summer and most recently assaulted our democratic institutions in the nation’s capitol on January 6th.
As I sit with the meaning of Dr. King’s words, three recent feature films came to mind that helped me think through the futility and destructiveness of political violence within the context of this day. I recommend all three, and they might be worth queuing up for you, too:
- Selma (2014), an academy award winning movie that chronicles in vivid detail the horrors faced by peaceful protesters as Martin Luther King and his colleagues tried to get the attention of national policymakers to address the injustices of the Jim Crow South.
- The Butler (2013), a nuanced portrayal of the tensions between generations of African Americans as they wrestle with the risks and opportunities that came with the emerging Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.
- Green Book (2018), a Best Picture academy award winning movie that provides an unusually layered and nuanced portrayal of racism across the United States in the early 1960s. Most importantly, Green Book, based on real events, illustrates in moving relational detail how respect and understanding can break down the walls of prejudice and discrimination.
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Miss Virginia Film & Public Policy Symposium
We are proud to announce our upcoming Symposium on Filmmaking, Education, and Public Policy this February. The symposium is founded on the DMC’s & Florida State University’s core values of Inspired Excellence and Dynamic Inclusiveness. Achieving these goals requires the passionate participation of our audience at FSU and beyond. This year, our central concentration will be on education reform. We will be screening and discussing the 2019 film Miss Virginia and host two panels of experts: one on filmmaking and one on public policy. The movie will be screened between the two panels.
For the filmmaking panel, we will spend an hour with Miss Virginia’s executive producer Nick Reid and director Daniel Hanna to discuss the creative decisions and business considerations behind the production. We will discuss the creative process and how public policy influences filmmaking from a creative perspective. Afterwards, we will screen Miss Virginia and watch their adaptation of this incredible true story. Register for this panel here.
The movie highlights the true story of Virginia Walden Ford, then a struggling single mother who was at risk of losing her fifteen-year-old son to the rough streets of Washington, DC. Unwilling to see him drop out and deal drugs, she placed him in a private school. But when she couldn’t afford tuition, she launched a movement to change the system. Attacked and threatened by those who don’t want change—from corrupt politicians to the local drug lord—Virginia must discover depths of strength she never knew she had. Register to see our screening here.
The symposium will close with the public policy panel discussing the future of school choice as a policy for the nation and how it pertains to the State of Florida. The panel will be moderated by Bill Mattox, director of the J. Stanley Marshall Center for Education Options at the James Madison Institute. Panelists will grapple with hard questions and the newest evidence on accountability and student success in charter schools, conventional public schools, private school vouchers, and other reforms. Register for this panel here.
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Staff Profile: Benjamin Mairs
New semester, new projects—and new leadership! Ben Mairs was given the reins as manager of the center’s Data Analytics Group (DAG) when the semester started on January 6th. Ben joined the DMC last fall after inquiring about opportunities in the center after graduating from Floridas State with his undergraduate degree in May. In addition to his current contributions—cleaning data, verifying public records, and producing Tableau charts for flopengov.org—he will be managing and mentoring our talented research assistants.
Ben is a proud alumnus with a joint undergraduate degree in Statistics and Economics. He is currently pursuing his MBA at FSU. Inspired to expand his skillset, Ben continues his Seminole education by building on his skillset with Python and associated tools as a research assistant at the College of Business. We are privileged to have someone of Ben’s caliber who can take on managerial responsibilities for our programs. We are also grateful that his last semester at FSU will be spent improving our impact at the DMC!
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DMC Alum Tells It Like It Is
To kick off the Spring 2021 semester, the DMC launched a semi-usual onboarding with our crew of 29 staff, research assistants, and interns. For those familiar with our processes, we welcomed our interns in the usual fashion: discussing expectations, building rapport, and learning about the diverse interests and hobbies of our researchers (everything from glass art to American Sign Language)! Unlike past semesters, we started a new tradition by welcoming the voice and advice of a DMC alumnus. We kicked off this new program by featuring DMC (and FSU) alumnus: Ross Shubrick (FSU BA, International Affairs, ‘15, MPA ‘20).
Ross was first introduced to the DMC as an undergraduate student in center director Sam Staley’s social entrepreneurship seminar (ECS 3022). At the time, he was also active with Global Peace Exchange: a student-led organization that organizes economic development projects in low-income countries. Ross worked as a social entrepreneurship project manager in the center from August 2015 to April 2016. Ross helped round out a three-year grant from the Diehl Family Foundation to fund a social entrepreneurship competition that attracted 120 proposals and led to funding social enterprises in Uganda, Nepal, Hait, and West Virginia.
Ross is a successful graduate of FSU who has reaped the benefits of a Seminole education tied into a DMC experience. In his presentation, Ross discussed his professional journey, which took him to IBM, then to TEKsystems, and now to his current position as Senior Consultant with the Government and Public Sector practice at Ernst and Young (EY). Thanks to Ross, our research assistants heard first-hand the significance of a DMC internship and the importance of character, project management skills, professional preparedness, and dedication: all values we emphasize at the center and “hard bake” into our curriculum.
We extend our earnest gratitude to Ross and the surrounding cohort of DMC alumni who continue to mentor and support our center and its researchers, even after they cross the graduation stage.
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Ross Shubrick FSU BA, International Affairs, ‘15, MPA ‘20
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Support Our Student Internship Program!
The DMC has made a name for itself through a robust and innovative internship program that now includes 30 undergraduate and graduate students in any given academic year. Our hands-on mentoring, immersive student education, applied policy research give them the tools to be successful when they graduate, whether they enter the professional workforce or go onto graduate school.
Please consider supporting this program, which is funded through private donations, by giving to the DeVoe L. Moore Center (Fund code F04824S in the drop-down memo).
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Upcoming DMC Events
All DMC affiliates are welcome to attend any and all of our upcoming events.
- Filmmaking and Public Policy Symposium: Tuesday, February 9, 2021 (Miss Virginia)
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Miss Virginia is a 2019 film that sheds light on the perspective of an impoverished single mother who launches a grassroots campaign to secure a private school voucher program in Washington.
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