The IR Fellows have had a very busy, if not particularly well-documented visually, fall semester. The first event IRF event of the semester was the summer reading discussion held with the ’18s and other interested Middle School students on their assigned summer reading: Arkin and Priest, Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State.  (The summer reading assignment for the ’16s and ’17s was to keep up with their reading of the journal Foreign Affairs.)

Also in September, inspired by her having read Malala Yousafzai’s I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, and building on her successful screening of the documentary Girl Rising last spring, Sophie Kidd (’16) created, along with fellow junior Sophie Jacobson, a new club: a Norfolk Academy chapter of the United Nations “Girl Up” organization.  In Sophie’s own words, her goal was to “educate the people around me who were the same age as these suffering girls.”  The Girl Up Initiative “envisions a world where all girls, no matter where they live, have the opportunity to become educated, healthy, safe, counted and positioned to be the next generation of leaders.”  In its first year NA’s Girl Up chapter has forty-seven members, making it the second largest club at Norfolk Academy.

The IR Fellows program also experienced three critical administrative advances early in the fall.  Most importantly, Mr. Bernie McMahon formally joined the IR Fellows faculty leadership team.  Second, each ’17 was assigned to one of the leadership “cones”:

• Administration and Leadership: Luke Cromwell;
• External Relations: Jaden Baum and Alix Galumbeck;
• Internal Relations: Nico Moscoso;
• Scheduling: Hallie Griffiths; and
• Special Projects: Chris Kazakis.

Finally, we initiated a new student mentorship program.  In a playful evening ceremony in Mr. McMahon’s backyard, each ’18 was assigned a ’16 to be his or her mentor.  Next year the ’17s will be assigned a ’19 to mentor, and when the ’16s graduate the ’18s will then become mentors themselves to ’20s.  The mentoring pairs are

• Thomas Ferguson (’16) with Jimmy Peccie (’18);
• Sophie Kidd (’16) with Tai Jeffers (’18);
• Pablo Vazquez (’16) with Adavya Dhawan (’18);
• Hannah Wheaton (’16) with Sophia Burke (’18); and, doing double duty,
• Jessica Williams (’16) with Mila Colizza (’18) and Chase Yager (’18).

In October, Thomas Ferguson (’16) and Pablo Vazquez (’16) co-authored an editorial on “Stopping Violence in the Middle East with Empathy” for the upcoming edition of NA’s The Academy publication.  Also in October, many of the IR Fellows were able to attend the “Clash of the Titans” debate at Regent University.  The subject of this year’s debate was “Has America Lost Its Leading Edge?”  Panelists included a former U.S. Representative to the United Nations and former presidents of Canada and Mexico.  The “after action” discussions we had among ourselves after that event were particularly lively!

The logo for Regent University’s 2014 “Clash of the Titans” event.

Finally, as usual, this fall we maintained our pattern of student-led discussions of Foreign Affairs articles.  Also this semester each IRF received a subscription to the British publication The Economist.  We experimented throughout the fall trying to find the right balance between in-depth discussions of world events, stemming from Foreign Affairs articles, and closely following contemporary events on a weekly basis via The Economist.  Long story short, they have both proved to be invaluable educational tools.