DC v Heller is one of the most important Supreme Court cases in recent memory. The case, which declared for the first time a Constitutional right to own a handgun, is particularly meaningful to study after last week’s tragic shooting in DC’s Navy Yard.
How do you confront the most intractable disagreement of our times? A disagreement so fundamental that each side feels passionately about an entirely different set of facts?
The 1994 Rwandan genocide is one of the darkest chapters in modern history. Nearly a million people were killed in 100 days while the world decided against intervening.
The Master Class. Every SEGL cohort experiences several each semester. And every SEGL student takes some of her or his most defining leadership lessons from them.
Our fifth year is off to a terrific start with the arrival of our Fall 2013 cohort.
The numbers are impressive: our 24 students hail from California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Washington.
After presenting to former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty on Friday, our students had barely two hours to prep for their next assignment: defending their North Korea policy document recommendations at the State Department.
How would you make DC better?That is the question our students confronted in a new case study this week. After hearing an overview of DC’s political situation and key issues on Monday, the students formed four groups that each tackled one of the District’s thorniest issues: HIV/AIDS (DC faces an HIV epidemic), education (DC’s public school system is considered among the least effective in the country), urban development (DC’s rapid gentrification has created many growing pains), and statehood (DC has no Congressional representation and needs its budget approved by Congress).
Our students slept well this weekend after what was arguably the busiest week in SEGL history.
Our journey began on Sunday afternoon, when nearly 100 members of the SEGL community–students, graduates, parents, and friends–came together in our virtual classroom to watch Girl Rising, a compelling new documentary about educating girls around the world.
DC is ground zero in the debate over the Second Amendment’s meaning. Our students saw that debate up close last week during a compelling case study on gun legislation and speechwriting.
Reflection. In an age of smart phones, microwave ovens, and GPS guidance, reflection is increasingly a lost art. And yet, reflection–perhaps more than anything else–helps us discover who we are and who we want to be.
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict looms over a myriad of contemporary problems. Countless leaders of the past and present have worked to address it in fits and starts and with limited success.
The Master Class. It is a hallmark of the SEGL experience. Several times a semester, we ask our guest experts to do more than provide expertise: we ask them to lead a class.
Our Spring 2013 students have arrived, and they are outstanding. On the coldest weekend of the season, 24 motivated new faces made their beds and filled their closets on Capitol Hill.
It is hard to imagine a more fulfilling week than the one our students just shared. Our penultimate week is devoted to an intensive study of crisis management, particularly in foreign affairs.
The first of our Fall 2012 semester capstone projects is in the books…or, more accurately, in the hands of the State Department’s leading experts on Chinese human rights.
Attention all prospective students:
We are excited to announce our newly released 2013-2014 application for admission! All current sophomores are eligible to apply for our Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters (each with a Priority Application Deadline of February 15, 2013).
Since our first fall semester, SEGL has shared a traditional Thanksgiving feast on the last night before Thanksgiving break. It is a time to come together as a community, to reflect on the semester, to look toward the end of our time together, to celebrate the end of the year’s biggest stretch of school days without a break, and–of course–to eat.
