Gauging the world’s shape
Tom Friedman '75, H'88
Major: Mediterranean StudiesAuthor, New York Times Columnist
New York
Written by one of the world’s most respected journalists, Tom Friedman’s twice-weekly foreign affairs column in The New York Times is a “must read” for political and business leaders around the world.
Frequent topics include global trade, the Middle East, and the environment. Friedman has won the Pulitzer Prize three times, twice (in 1983 and 1988) for international reporting and once (in 2002) for commentary.
His 2005 international best-selling book "The World Is Flat" examined a world of escalating globalization in which historical and geographical divisions are increasingly irrelevant. His follow-up book, "Hot, Flat and Crowded," proposed solutions to global warming.
Friedman has served as a visiting professor at Brandeis and has been awarded honorary degrees from several U.S. universities, including Brandeis. He also received the Brandeis Alumni Achievement Award in 2000.
Singing for Justice
Susan Cohen ’80
Major: Latin American and Spanish literatureImmigration attorney
Boston
Sometimes we find our careers. Sometimes our careers find us. Hoping to put her Spanish fluency to good use, Susan Cohen took a job after graduation as a paralegal to an attorney who concentrated on immigration cases. Within two years, she left the job and headed for the Cardozo Law School.
Today Cohen is a member of the Boston law firm Mintz Levin, where she founded what grew into one of the nation’s largest immigration-law practices. When not helping corporate clients negotiate the tricky waters of employing foreign nationals, she has worked to secure political asylum for scores of new arrivals, including many threatened with deportation to lands where they faced almost-certain execution.
“When I graduated from law school,” she confesses, “I thought I wanted to be a litigator, but I my work as an immigration attorney is so much more gratifying. I am saving lives and making lasting human connections.”
Cohen is president of the board of directors of the Boston group PAIR, the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation project, which matches troubled émigrés with lawyers willing to take their cases on a pro bono basis.
A gifted musician, she decided to mark the organization’s 20th anniversary this year by releasing her first CD and donating the proceeds to PAIR. Titled “In Time,” the album includes a dozen songs that describe not only human anguish, but also the triumph of the human spirit, reflected in people’s abilities to continue living in the presence of unspeakable suffering.
An exile works for world peace
Haile Menkerios '70
Major: EconomicsUnited Nations Assistant Secretary for Political Affairs
New York
Haile Menkerios was raised in Eritrea, on Africa’s northeast coast, where, under occupying Ethiopian control, educational opportunity was limited. But through the university’s Wien Scholarship for international students he was able to attend Brandeis, where he majored in economics, was captain of the soccer and track teams and joined with others protesting the Vietnam War.“I had come from a feudal country, a hierarchical kingdom ruled by an emperor whose word was the law and who controlled the empire’s only newspaper. It was at Brandeis, with its liberal outlook, that I learned what it was like to have the freedom to think,” he recalls.
After doing graduate work at Harvard, Menkerios returned home to fight in the Eritrean People’s Liberation Army, help shape a new Eritrean government, and sit on the transitional parliament and in other key national roles. In a subsequent regime shift, though, he was accused of treason for propagating pluralistic elections and became a political exile, forced to flee his homeland.
Now U.N. assistant secretary general for political affairs, he is responsible for peace and security issues in Africa and facilitates U.N. Security Council efforts worldwide.
“My work for the United Nations,” he says, “is an extension of the social commitment that began at Brandeis.”
Framing Foreign Policy
Becca Wasser '08
Majors: International and Global Studies, Islamic and Middle Eastern StudiesResearch Assistant, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Washington, D.C.
Becca Wasser spends her days investigating Egyptian border security and counterradicalization strategies. As a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Wasser helps leading scholars analyze critical Middle East issues for op-ed pieces and the institute’s PolicyWatch reports, which are circulated to policy makers on Capitol Hill, in the Department of State and in the White House. She has even co-published reports with the director of the institute’s program on counterterrorism and intelligence.
"It’s a really great way to influence U.S. foreign policy," she says.
Wasser says Brandeis' unique IGS major and individualized attention from renowned experts, including her thesis adviser Kanan Makiya, set her on the right path for an exciting career in international affairs.
“I was able to do international studies in my own way,” says Wasser, who focused on global governance. “And taking small classes with scholars from the Crown Center for Middle East Studies was amazing.”