2019 Summer Junior Interns Day 1 (June 17, 2019): Day one of the USC Shoah Foundation’s William P. Lauder Junior Internship Program kicked off with middle and high school students discussing agency, leadership and the importance of being an upstander in their communities. Later, they got to meet Stephen D. Smith, the executive director of the Institute, who spoke about the power storytelling through testimony. Day 2 (June 18): Students’ discussions shifted inward on the second day. Using testimony from IWitness, the Institute’s interactive education platform, they grappled with their internal biases as humans, perception and the consequences of othering. Day three included a visit to the Japanese American National Museum and the Go for Broke exhibit on June 19 in downtown Los Angeles. Students built upon their discussions during the previous day by learning about the experiences of victims of oppression. “This exhibit helped me understand the experience that the Japanese were going through. They lost items and things that were valuable to them. Many of them had to hold their feelings of pain in when in fear.” - Ishika in 11th grade Day 4 (June 20): Students continued their discussions about prejudice and oppression, which were supplemented by engaging with Dimensions in Testimony, a collection of interactive biographies that enabled them to have real-time conversations with digital projections of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide. "Dimensions in Testimony will help my sister and my brother, who are three and four right now, to learn these stories without [the Holocaust survivors] actually being here.” - Heiarii in 11th grade Day 5 (June 21): The Leadership Workshop concluded with student presentations. Drawing upon the week’s discussions, students shared This I believe statements, detailing specific ways they choose to become an active participant in civil society.
