RELATED PROJECT
RELATED ISSUE
BLOGGER
Originally from South Carolina, Abigail Clauhs has already firmly established her presence at Boston University as a junior majoring in Religion and minoring in English and Anthropology. She leads...
Where do young people come down on questions of faith, values, and public life? How do they relate their values to public policy issues including education, economic inequality, and the environment? These questions, critically important for the 2012 election, are at the center of a campus conversation being organized by the Berkley Center and Georgetown University. This blog features an ongoing conversation about these issues between students selected as Millennial Values Fellows through a national competition. You can read and comment on their blogs here.
To learn more about the project, visit the Campus Conversation on Values page.
OTHER POSTS
Millennials on Social Media and Politics
November 15, 2012
Millennials on Social Issues and Diversity
November 12, 2012
Hira Baig (Rice) on Why the Presidential Election Matters to Millennials
November 7, 2012
Millennials on Religion and Interfaith Work
November 7, 2012
Ryan Price (Drake) on E Pluribus Duo
November 6, 2012
Mohammad Usman (DePauw) on Unpredictable Millennials
November 5, 2012
Millennials on Affirmative Action Policy
November 3, 2012
Seth Warner (Vassar) on What Happens as the "God Gap" Widens
November 2, 2012
Josina De Raadt (Dordt) on How Social Media Is Like Wii Bowling
October 31, 2012
Zachary Yentzer (Arizona State) on the Next Greatest Generation
October 29, 2012
Brice Ezell (George Fox) on Post-Racial America? Race, Millennials, and the 2012 Election
October 25, 2012
Tyler Bishop (Vanderbilt) on a Future of Hashtags #whatitmeansforus
October 23, 2012
Brice Ezell (George Fox) on How the People Can Heal a “Divided,” Partisan Nation
October 4, 2012
Hira Baig (Rice) on Religion and American Democracy
October 4, 2012
Tyler Bishop (Vanderbilt) on How It’s All About Relatability: Voter Turnout
October 3, 2012
Josina De Raadt (Dordt) on Mistaking Politics for a Hollywood Blockbuster
October 2, 2012
Mohammad Usman (DePauw) on the Internet Solution
October 1, 2012
>> more
AT THE CENTER
EVENTS (1)
INTERVIEWS (18)
A Discussion with Andria Wisler, Director of the Center for Social Justice at Georgetown University
March 26, 2013
March 26, 2013
A Discussion with Roksana Bahramitash, Director of Research, University of Montreal
December 2, 2007
December 2, 2007
LETTERS (12)
RELATED RESOURCES ON MIDDLE EAST
Abigail Clauhs (Boston University) on the Millennial Generation
March 19, 2012
My high school environmental science teacher, a reformed hippie who had gone from Woodstock attendee to educator, often told us, "We were the generation who said we were going to change the world. You are the generation who is actually going to do it."
Granted, she was only thinking along the lines of building solar panels and perfecting electric car (and getting in touch with nature, which she had us do by going on wilderness rambles through the woods around our school, resulting in muddy jeans and many disgruntled high school seniors). But that phrase of hers moved me in ways her lectures didn't--the idea that our generation, the Millennial Generation, was different. A promise for the future. Something real.
There is no question that our generation is unique in many ways. It's not just the 90's legacy of the Backstreet Boys and Furbies or the current hipster culture of flannel shirts and skinny jeans and ironic mustaches. It's not just the prevalence of social media and smartphones and the threat that every action might be photographed or posted. We are the generation that grew up in the true genesis of the Information Age, our lives punctuated with the drama of the 2000 election and the tragedy of two towers falling in a September when most of us were still too young to truly understand what we were seeing. Coming of age in a world where people were realizing that religion is still an essential part of global dynamics, where economies were rising and tumbling, and where Arab Springs and wars in the Middle East haunted our television screens, disillusionment and idealism have often become entangled in our maturation.
But the blessing of such a web of events and technologies and change is that we have come to see ourselves as a part of a global community. This is the crucial difference, the contrast between our values and those of our predecessors: our identification reaches across borders. The Millennial Generation is not just American, but worldwide. We have seen the struggles of our peers on Facebook and Twitter and televisions, and we relate to them. My environmental science teacher always used to say that her generation had talked about changing the world, but that our generation would be the one to achieve it. And we will, because for us, changing the world is a global task--and we are a global generation.
Granted, she was only thinking along the lines of building solar panels and perfecting electric car (and getting in touch with nature, which she had us do by going on wilderness rambles through the woods around our school, resulting in muddy jeans and many disgruntled high school seniors). But that phrase of hers moved me in ways her lectures didn't--the idea that our generation, the Millennial Generation, was different. A promise for the future. Something real.
There is no question that our generation is unique in many ways. It's not just the 90's legacy of the Backstreet Boys and Furbies or the current hipster culture of flannel shirts and skinny jeans and ironic mustaches. It's not just the prevalence of social media and smartphones and the threat that every action might be photographed or posted. We are the generation that grew up in the true genesis of the Information Age, our lives punctuated with the drama of the 2000 election and the tragedy of two towers falling in a September when most of us were still too young to truly understand what we were seeing. Coming of age in a world where people were realizing that religion is still an essential part of global dynamics, where economies were rising and tumbling, and where Arab Springs and wars in the Middle East haunted our television screens, disillusionment and idealism have often become entangled in our maturation.
But the blessing of such a web of events and technologies and change is that we have come to see ourselves as a part of a global community. This is the crucial difference, the contrast between our values and those of our predecessors: our identification reaches across borders. The Millennial Generation is not just American, but worldwide. We have seen the struggles of our peers on Facebook and Twitter and televisions, and we relate to them. My environmental science teacher always used to say that her generation had talked about changing the world, but that our generation would be the one to achieve it. And we will, because for us, changing the world is a global task--and we are a global generation.