The World in LA; Los Angeles in the World

Brave Girl Rising , screened this past Monday for members of the community including Global Scholars from both Poly and schools in the Pasadena Unified School District, follows the story of Nasro, a Somalian refugee in the Dadaab Refugee Camp in Kenya. The twenty-minute short film, which blends the artistry characteristic of film festivals with subject matter typical of a documentary, furthers the mission of the original Girl Rising piece, released five years ago to promote girls’ education worldwide. Brave Girl Rising focuses on one girl and her struggle to receive an education in the environment that is perhaps least conducive to such aims. The film has five main segments, each of which depicts a distinct part of her journey to attain an education. The film, per Martha Adams, the producer who spoke at the event, was not wholly reflective of what actually happened during Nasro’s years in the camp. However, the piece did attempt to capture the realities of the refugee experie...

I recently travelled to New England for a few days to see family and friends and to pick my little brother up from sleep-away camp. While I was there, I decided to visit a few small liberal arts colleges as well since I will be applying to colleges this year. During each information session, the admissions counselor, without fail, would make a point of discussing their school’s robust financial aid program, and for good reason; higher education has historically excluded students from disadvantaged backgrounds. But, particularly after two summer programs where I had numerous peers from all over the world, one group of applicants was flagrantly glossed over in these discussions of financial aid: international students. Perhaps their omission was an unfortunate byproduct of a program tailored to domestic applicants, an intentional decision to save time, or a mere oversight. However, I suspected there were other reasons these sessions did not readily offer up such information. W...

This summer, I have met hundreds of students my age from around the world. I now consider as friends citizens of Pakistan and Zimbabwe, Tunisia and the Philippines, Czechoslovakia and Brazil, Sudan and Costa Rica, and countless other countries. The reality of these relationships, in decades past, would have been months or even years of separation, punctuated by perhaps a chance encounter or the occasional reunion. Today, however, I can get in contact with my new friends in seconds. On platforms like Instagram, GroupMe, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, the great distance that has historically characterized intercontinental friendships shrinks to the distance from your hand to your pocket. Thus, we natives of the Internet are separated not by miles and convenience but by our circumstances, our cultures, our surroundings. The shift in the nature of these relationships has resulted in the creation and continuation of long-term friendships, at least for me. But, it has also demanded the use of medi...

During the last decade, immigration has taken center stage in many political movements in the West. Frustrations with the apparent shortcomings of immigration fueled the rise of both far-right populism in Western Europe and the current American presidency. The underlying causes of this resentment or suspicion of immigration range from economic stagnation to increasing globalization to purportedly threatened cultural norms, yet the demonization of newcomers, particularly those from Latin American or Middle Eastern countries, is a common thread. However, the economic impact of immigration has long been understood by economists as generally positive, particularly in cases of movement from poorer to wealthier countries. In a novel way of going about opinion writing, Philippe Legrain outlines his support for and dispels negative misperceptions of immigration as a social phenomenon. In what is known as an Open Essay in The Economist , Legrain explains his reasoning for preferring immigratio...

Airports are on the receiving end of endless ridicule, much of which is, in my eyes, unmerited. Given the miraculous nature of hurtling through the sky in a metal tube along with a few hundred other passengers, it would seem fair to accept the groggy line of passengers stumbling through security, to stomach a subpar caprese or stale croissant, and to cede armrest territory to the dozing college student to your left. Indeed, against the wonder of air travel, complaints like these shrink to nothingness. It is unfortunate when delays push back vacation plans or, worse yet, preclude attendance at weddings, funerals, and the like, but I believe a tendency to emphasize and report on failure leads to a distorted perception of the general positive functioning of airports.  Graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons More legitimate are the critiques of air travel as an exclusive facet of society, an intrinsic global good, or as a simple mechanism for the relocation from the familiar to...

As my fellow students and I departed from Yale Young Global Scholars (YYGS) two days ago, I thought I should reflect on my immersion in such a global community. This program, which happens to share part of its name with the Global Scholars program at Poly in which I am currently enrolled, brings students from around the world to participate in intensive academic dialogue and research projects pertaining to a particular field or subject matter.  I was a student in the Sustainable Development and Social Entrepreneurship session, during which I engaged with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, theories of post-colonialism, the implications of expansion and global outreach, and the ethics of international community-building. I deeply appreciated the material that my peers and I covered in lectures, seminars, and capstone projects, but I think the defining characteristic of YYGS—the remarkably international composition of its student body—is what I should discuss here. At the ...

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion called The Housing Crisis: Why Affordable Cities Start in your Backyard, hosted by Global Scholars Ian and Victor. They invited an architect, a board member of a housing nonprofit, an affordable housing policy maker and a tenants’ rights advocate and community activist to speak at the event, which activists, tenant groups and members of the Poly community attended. The panel was enlightening in a number of ways, primarily in bringing forth diverse perspectives on such a pivotal issue. By facilitating a dialogue between the experts in their respective fields and those in attendance, Ian and Victor advanced both the recognition of and familiarity with the matter of affordable housing, which is a necessarily global matter, especially here in Southern California. The issues facing Los Angeles, a city where over a third (3.5 million ) of residents are immigrants, shift constantly with the ebbs and flows of migrations. I pa...