Eleanor Roosevelt Student Scholarship

Known as one of the 20th Century’s most influential women, Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political leader who used her influence as First Lady from 1933 to 1945 to promote the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and take a prominent role as a civil rights advocate. Eleanor founded the United Nations Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the U.N. and was a delegate to the U.N. General Assembly in 1945, chairing the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Public service did not stop there, as Eleanor maintained a daily "My Day" column, a nationally syndicated column published from 1935 to 1962. During those years, Eleanor wrote consistently six days a week, interrupted only when her husband died, missing four days. The column appeared in ninety papers in all parts of the nation, providing Eleanor with a reading audience of 4,034,552. The column allowed Eleanor to reach millions of Americans with her views on social and political issues, current and historical events, and her private and public life.

As Eleanor debated how to continue a public role after FDR's death, the central issue was which arena would give her the stage from which she would have the most impact. "Of one thing I am sure," she wrote, "in order to be useful we must stand for the things we feel are right, and we must work for those things wherever we find ourselves. It does very little good to believe in something unless you tell your friends and associates of your beliefs".

The purpose of the Eleanor Roosevelt Student Scholarship is to inspire ICAR students to be diligent in translating and making relevant their knowledge—visà- vis conflict analysis and resolution—for the broader community, as Eleanor so admirably did with her column. The scholarship provides an annual monetary award to the ICAR undergraduate, certificate, M.S. or Ph.D.-level student who exemplifies best Eleanor's unstoppable commitment to public awareness-raising on issues of social, cultural and political import. The award is given to the student actively publishing articles, columns, letters or op-eds in local, regional, national or international print media. Award eligibility criteria requires that the student is analyzing local, regional, national or international conflicts from a conflict resolution perspective and publishes under their ICAR affiliation. The 2007/2008 GMU school year heralds the first issuance of the award, to be granted in May 2008. The award total is $2000. To be eligible for consideration, students will need to submit their published pieces, printed between September 2007 and April 2008 to a select advisory committee by the end of April 2008. Notices will be sent out prior with specific submission guidelines.

For further questions please contact Michael Shank at [email protected]