Five students have been selected as Lender Center for Social Justice student fellows and will work on a research project that examines American news media coverage and United States policymaking related to the war on terror.

The group will work with Nausheen Husain, assistant professor of magazine, news and digital journalism (MND) in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, who last spring was named Lender Center faculty fellow for 2023-25.

Student fellows will conduct research, analyze data and present findings related to how American media coverage of the war on terror affected U.S. policymaking and later impacted Muslim individuals and communities. They will also learn oral history methods to conduct trauma-informed interviews with individuals and in communities affected by war-on-terror policies; examine resistance projects and movements contributing to U.S. policymaking; and collaborate with Husain’s research partner, Nicole Nguyen, associate professor of criminality, law and justice at the University of Illinois – Chicago College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, to publish findings.

The following Maxwell students were named 2023-25 student fellows:

Mohammad Ebad Athar

Athar’s dissertation examines the global impact of the post-9/11 period for the South Asian diaspora in the United States and the Persian Gulf. In drawing connections between those regions, Athar hopes to illustrate how South Asian identity has been securitized across transnational borders and how South Asian political activism has resisted that framework.

Tia Poquette

Poquette is a third-year policy studies major in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences with double minors in architecture in the School of Architecture and sociology in the Maxwell School. Poquette is interested in urban policy, sustainability, social justice and criminal justice. She has interned with the nonprofit Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance and Youth Public History Institute. Her work there focused on community building and the history of prisons and policing, as well as their contemporary connections. She serves as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Public Policy Analysis.

Lender Center student fellows work on projects for two years, receive a $2,000 fellowship and will present their work at the 2025 Lender Symposium.

Read more in the SU News article, "Lender Center for Social Justice Names 5 2023-25 Student Fellows."