2021 Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration of Human Rights is Sunday, Monday, January 25th through Sunday, January 31. Please visit https://mlk.uiowa.edu/ to see events and activities.

IS:3012 - Community-Engaged Learning will be offered for the second time in Spring 2021. This experiential learning course provides the opportunity to gain experience working with a Local/Global Nonprofit. International Studies students recommend taking Community Engaged Learning with Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa.

The International Studies program is committed to inclusive teaching, advising, and mentoring. Achieving this requires identifying and challenging the systemic inequalities which shape our lives, our university and the global contexts and issues about which we teach. We thus join the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Faculty Senate, and other campus governance bodies in condemning efforts—including and beyond those made by Executive Order—to restrict our academic freedom by curtailing anti-racist and social justice-oriented teaching and praxis.

Isabelle Davis, an International Studies student at the University of Iowa, earned a 2020 David L. Boren Fellowship, and will spend next year studying Turkish in Azerbaijan as part of the new 2020 Turkish Flagship Language Initiative.

An International Studies course taught by Peter Gerlach, "Service Learning: Community Engaged Learning with Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa," turned what was going to be a panel discussion into a Coronavirus Awareness Webinar for Refugees and Immigrants in Iowa. Participants included the mayor of Iowa City, Iowa's State Refugee Coordinator, and other experts.

Congratulations to IS Students Sam Silker and Cecilla Dugger on winning prizes in the 2020 Korean Speech Contest.

Congratulations to IS Student Lexy Winecke! Her essay, “A Call for Human Rights in the US Prison System,” was selected for the 2020 Weston International Human Rights Essay Prize.

Senéad Short, who will receive a BA in international studies from the University of Iowa this May, is the winner of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Award to Taiwan for 2020-21.

International Studies majors Holly Harris and Joseph Sailor were named Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program awardees. Even though CLS is suspending its 2020 summer programs, we still believe our UI finalists deserve a shout out for this prestigious accomplishment and all of their hard work.