{"id":19817,"date":"2023-04-10T20:37:03","date_gmt":"2023-04-10T20:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=19817"},"modified":"2026-02-27T23:14:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T23:14:37","slug":"macalester-student-among-12-selected-for-frederick-douglass-global-fellowship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2023\/04\/macalester-student-among-12-selected-for-frederick-douglass-global-fellowship\/","title":{"rendered":"Macalester student among 12 selected for Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Macalester junior <\/span>Hufsa Ahmed \u201824<\/b> is one of 12 students from across the country to be selected for a <\/span>Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship<\/span><\/a>. The program offers opportunities for student leaders of color to study social justice leadership across the globe. The cohort will travel to Washington D.C., Cape Town, and Ireland in July and August to learn about the legacies of social justice figures such as Nelson Mandela, Daniel O\u2019Connell, and Frederick Douglass. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m most excited to explore Cape Town,\u201d Ahmed said. \u201cNelson Mandela is someone I look up to because he had an incredible amount of patience in his work with social justice and committed his life to it. I\u2019m really excited to be able to go there and learn about Mandela and this country so far away from where I\u2019ve grown up.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) launched the fellowship in 2017 with a goal to increase study-abroad opportunities for underrepresented communities. <\/span>The Government of Ireland will co-sponsor the 2023 Frederick Douglass Global Fellows in honor of the meeting between 27-year-old abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the great Irish reformer Daniel O\u2019Connell in Dublin in 1845\u2014an experience that expanded Douglass\u2019 view of social injustice and influenced his style of agitating for positive change through nonviolent social and political efforts in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think my approach to college and life in general is to take advantage of opportunities I see. I\u2019m really big into experiential learning and doing things that are different than what I\u2019ve done before, so as someone who hasn\u2019t studied away or spent any time learning outside of Minnesota, I thought this was a really cool opportunity to learn outside of the community that I\u2019ve grown up in,\u201d Ahmed said. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the CIEE, Ahmed was selected because of her academic excellence, communication skills, and commitment to social justice. Ahmed was an intern for the Governor of Minnesota and a Chuck Green Civic Engagement Fellow. She is also a member of the Muslim Student Association board and has lobbied for climate justice in the Minnesota state legislature.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a political science and economics double major, Ahmed is looking towards working in public policy advising in her post-graduate career, for which Macalester and the fellowship will help prepare her.  <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMacalester\u2019s focus on both a global education but also an interdisciplinary education has prepared me for the fellowship. <\/span>I was grappling with the idea of whether I wanted to spend my summer doing a program that doesn\u2019t necessarily give me hard, technical skills, and instead focuses on soft skills,” Ahmed said. “I came to realize that whether it’s communication, leadership, or learning about other cultures, these are still equally important skills.<\/span>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahmed said she has thought about policy mostly from a very U.S.-centric perspective, so being given the chance to learn how policy changes were pushed in other parts of the world is very exciting. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent a lot of college doing community organizing, political work, volunteering, and being really integrated within my community. It will be really cool to learn about how people and movements in different countries have achieved social justice,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the skills and information that have been successful in the past are going to be helpful for me as I try to apply them to my own work.\u201d  <\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The program offers opportunities for student leaders of color to study social justice leadership across the globe.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":19819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-newswire","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19817"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31007,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19817\/revisions\/31007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}