by Catherine Ruby | Aug 23, 2016 | Internship Experiences, Undergraduate Students
Working with Caritas Internationalis’ UN delegation with Mr. Joseph Donnelly gave me a close look inside the UN and on how NGO’s interact with the UN. Caritas is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations and much of my work involved researching and relaying information to my supervisor in order to help with his advocacy work. There was a focus on the current volatile situations in the 5 year old newest country, South Sudan, and the border regions of the country of Sudan itself. Sudanese forces have indiscriminately bombed civilians to the point where they have to retreat into caves in order to save themselves. Caritas is trying to provide aid to the people there but the government has also shown itself to be willing to bomb hospitals.
Caritas hosted the visit of a Sudanese Catholic bishop to advocate with UN agencies, Member States and NGOs about the sustained violence, intense human security and injustices taking place in South Kordofan, Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile regions. I scheduled meetings for the bishop. It was interesting to see how meetings are usually arranged in the UN system and I was surprised to learn how last minute some of them ended up being.
Organization is a key skill that I refined during this internship and I also sharpened my research skills. Towards the end of my internship I was asked to shift my focus to Latin America and the events going on there. I researched the current status of the historic peace process in Colombia between the government and the FARC after 50 years of fighting and a 2016 SC resolution/mechanism. This was an interesting experience, especially since I had to make sure that I filtered articles by date and made sure that my sources were reliable. This may sound like a straightforward and basic thing to do, but I realized that any mistakes that I made would have ramifications beyond me. This caused me to pay closer attention to small details.
I also learned to assess diplomatic language to a certain degree. I had the opportunity to attend meetings at the UN such as meetings in the ECOSOC chamber and the Security Council. Being able to hear how diplomats talk when they make speeches helped me navigate through the meanings beyond what was said. I am not exactly proficient at this, but it was a skill I previously did not have, and the more I refined it, the more interesting those meetings became.
My biggest takeaway from this internship would have to be a newfound appreciation for the UN and the various organizations that participate in the system. In the past, I was quite critical of the UN. I never thought that it should not exist, but I did think that the political dimension of it was a dead end that never seemed to work. The humanitarian work that the UN provided was the only thing it seemed to do better than anyone else, but since working at the UN I have come to realize that the UN is not a monolithic entity. Organizations like UNICEF are technically separate from the UN bureaucracy and so is the Security Council.
I realize now that the UN has taken the fall for many mistakes that originated from the member states, and that the UN is only as strong and as effective as the member states want to be. Politics certainly gets in the way of many of the initiatives that the UN tries to undertake, but the UN is still able to function despite the obstacles. I had never really considered the UN as a possible career path, but now that I have completed my internship there, I would not mind searching for a job there.
I would definitely recommend this internship to others. Perhaps they will walk away with a greater appreciation for the UN, as I did.
by Catherine Ruby | Aug 18, 2016 | Graduate Students, Internship Experiences
Finding a Home at Homeland Security
Hello, my name is Dylan Ashdown and I am currently a Public Affairs intern in the Office of Multimedia, Motion Pictures, and Television, Office of Public Affairs, Department of Homeland Security (DHS). At Seton Hall, I am finishing up two Master’s degrees which will be awarded to me at the end of my internship; one degree will be in Diplomacy and International Relations and the other is in Strategic Communication. This internship has been very beneficial and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested!
I have the “cool” internship. I work directly with the writers and producers of documentaries, television shows, and feature films, along with other “non-news” media stakeholders. Both of my degrees have been of use in this internship. The other day a writer reached out to our office requesting DHS’s help with their show. I ended up spending a few hours researching where I would defect if I was a scientist escaping from an evil government in New York City for a script the writer was working on. This was something that was very relevant to my Diplomacy schooling. In terms of my Strategic Communication classes, I have put together pitch plans for movie producers and interviewed cybersecurity professionals, and technology experts/inventors (all of whom one can find in the Homeland Security).
There is always something exciting happening at DHS. For example, today I attended the daily morning briefing and found out that I was meeting the Secretary of Homeland Security in three hours. Three hour later, I am sitting in a room with 15 other interns getting a briefing directly from the Secretary. This is not your normal internship experience!
Ultimately, the best thing about my internship hasn’t been meeting politically famous people; the best part has been the mentorship that I have received from my supervisor. I never really understood the meaning of a mentor until I started this internship. I asked more questions in my month here at DHS than I ever did in my six years of school and my mentor has gone out of his way to answer all of them. I have learned how to walk, talk, and behave as a public affairs professional in Washington D.C. because of the hours that I have spent with my mentor and because of how much he trusts me to handle projects on my own.
The most rewarding part of my internship is knowing that my work has a direct impact on educating the American people on the work of the Department of Homeland Security. I am very happy that I chose to intern at the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Public Affairs.
by Catherine Ruby | Aug 18, 2016 | Internship Experiences, Undergraduate Students
After Deadline – My Summer at The New York Times
I started my internship at The New York Times on the day of the Orlando attacks, the worst mass shooting in United States history.
Or maybe this thrilling summer began in May, when I spent a week at Temple University with 12 other lucky souls in what was, basically, editing boot camp – seven days that began with a wakeup call at 6 a.m. and ended after falling asleep on my books well past 1 a.m.
Let’s go even further and say the adventure started in December, two weeks before finals, when I got a phone call from a kindly old man who told me out of the blue that he would see me in Philadelphia. Confused, I asked, “Excuse me, what is this for?” And Professor Edward Trayes said, “Oh, The New York Times is looking to pay you $1000 a week to be an editing intern – does that sound good?”*
But this story really kicked off when I spent the entire month of October reviewing for the Dow Jones News Fund copy editing test – a tear-inducing, confidence-busting exam that around 1000 applicants subject themselves to every year, just for a shot at the world’s greatest bastion of journalism.
I thought I’d flunked the test, which made the call from Dr. Trayes all the more surprising. At that point, I would have been happy to be assigned to any desk at the Times, but Dr. Trayes thought I would be a good fit for the Foreign/National desk – or, paradise for an international relations major observing her first U.S. election.
Foreign/National was inundated by so much bad news this summer (multiple bombings, multiple shootings, multiple email scandals from the Democrats, multiple gaffes from Donald Trump) that one of the staff editors, a former Dow Jones intern, said, “Francesca, this is the no-joke desk. You should be proud of yourself for surviving this summer.”
Honestly, I’m just relieved I survived the hours: I worked on Saturdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., then on Sundays to Wednesdays from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.
A lot of things copy editors do are easier said than done – for example, writing a headline that is punchy and attention-grabbing and an accurate summary of the story while staying true to the lofty Timesian tone and fitting into the allotted layout perfectly is an art form.
The challenge for us interns was to make it on “After Deadline” – a weekly list on the Times’s internal blog that recognizes the past week’s best headlines. Only one out of nine ever made it (spoiler alert: it wasn’t me). Getting my first headline through to print had been hard enough, but it finally happened on a story about Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. My proudest achievement, though, was on the first night on the Democratic convention: I wrote the headline for a story about Michelle Obama’s relationship with Hillary Clinton, and for a few hours that night, it was the first hit on Google if you searched “Michelle Obama.”
There are many things that people don’t realize about newspapers. The locations you see at the top of the article? Those are called datelines, and they indicate that the reporter was actually on the ground. But that doesn’t mean real journalism is putting on a helmet and running around a war zone with a GoPro. Some budding news websites like to put reporters in the center of the story, producing content such as “Here’s What Happened When I Had Dinner with a Taliban Leader,” or something like that. The New York Times is the only legacy newspaper that still maintains an extensive international staff in bureaus throughout the world, and reporters are assigned to a region for extended periods, not just for one-day trips.
The highlight of my internship with the New York Times was when I met Azam Ahmed, the bureau chief formerly in Kabul and now in Mexico City. I was excited not only because he was a foreign correspondent, but also because he had written the article on Taliban justice that inspired my thesis. Talking to him made me want to be a foreign correspondent all the more. You could read every academic paper about Afghanistan, but an ivory tower academic will never be able to tell you about Afghanistan the way a journalist on the ground can.
Of course, it’s going to be a while before I’m anywhere close to being worthy of Azam’s credentials.
But this summer at The New York Times was an important stepping stone, and I am grateful to have experienced how a world-renowned newsroom with the highest standards works. Now it falls on me to build my street cred as a journalist and, hopefully, work my way back to the august institution on Eighth Avenue.
*I kid you not – this was how the conversation actually went.
by Catherine Ruby | Aug 18, 2016 | Graduate Students, Internship Experiences
I am Nina Robinson, a dual degree candidate of the M.A. programs in Diplomacy and Asian Studies. I interned with the Department of Homeland Security: United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), specifically with the Office of Privacy. My long-term goal is to become a Foreign Service Officer and to one day serve as a Career Ambassador. Since high school, after studying in China for two consecutive summers, I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to a career in Diplomacy.
Essentially, my desire to hone my skills and apply the knowledge that I learned in my Diplomacy classes; gain Federal Government experience; and to prepare for a career serving the United States, is what led me to pursue an internship with DHS-USCIS. The Department of Homeland Security was created after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, to safeguard the United States’ border. The agency’s mission is to protect all people, including U.S. citizens, permanent legal residents, immigrants, and non-U.S. citizens. The Department of Homeland Security has offices almost all over the world, which assists those who wish to become citizens and seek asylum due to fear of persecution or danger.
Working with the Department of Homeland Security- United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, introduced me to the many avenues that one may take to establish a federal career focused on international relations. The Office of Privacy, although a small office and often confused with civil liberties or security, plays an important role in the agency. USCIS works to ensure that citizens around the world have the opportunity to become U.S. citizens and provides benefits and services for immigrants. The Office of Privacy works to ensure that the work conducted in USCIS promotes transparency in the government and protects its clients who include non-U.S. citizens and immigrants. The Privacy Act of 1974, which was enacted after the Watergate scandal with then-President Richard Nixon, is the cornerstone of my office. This Act is what helps the Office of Privacy guarantee that information being collected from the people by the government is being protected. Our office ensures that immigrants’ and citizens’ personal information, provided to the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being protected, which includes informing clients of what their information is being used for and how it will be used.
In the short period of time I interned here, I have learned a tremendous amount. I have attended four trainings, all which are exclusive to the analysts and officers in the Office of Privacy. As not to go too far into specifics, I have learned about the importance of encrypting PII (Personal Identifiable Information) and various information sharing database sources that the United States and other partner countries use to identify suspected terrorists. Along with training, my office has also provided mentorship, helping me to familiarize myself with various Privacy Act Laws as it relates to the Federal Government and offering career related advice. My life-long dream of becoming an ambassador has not changed. However, Privacy has become a big issue in the world of International Affairs and is a growing field. Students who are looking to put their diplomacy and analytical skills to use may find Privacy an interesting and exciting alternative to the Diplomacy field.
