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Portrait of the Activist
as a Young Woman
Am I a scholar or a
political activist?
April Rosenblum has
wrestled with that question since finishing high school. At Temple, she learned she can be
both - without compromise.
A President's Scholar who
is graduating with a bachelor's degree in history from the College of Liberal Arts, Rosenblum was brought
up in Philadelphia's East Germantown neighborhood by parents
who ran a non-profit that studied communal living and alternative
technologies. Her father, who passed away in 2002, devoted his life to
peace and justice work after becoming an activist in the South during
the civil rights movement.
"My parents dedicated
themselves to giving people hope about the future," Rosenblum said. "I
was raised to believe that I had to go out into the world and work to
change things."
After graduating from Philadelphia's High School for the
Creative and Performing Arts, April took two years off to "live in the
real world and be an activist," she said. She turned down a full
scholarship from Temple to work against racism
in the U.S. criminal justice system.
Eventually, she felt the
call to re-engage her scholarly interests, and she applied to college
again, choosing Temple with the help of a
generous financial aid package.
At Temple, April developed a
hunger to explore Jewish history - and her own Jewish identity. She
focused on 20th century trends in world Jewish history and identity,
setting up challenging independent study programs with several Temple faculty members. She
also began an intensive program of foreign language studies (she will
graduate with a Spanish minor).
Temple's diverse student body
also helped April feel welcome from the first day she set foot on
campus.
"Temple always felt nurturing to
me," she said. "The people here aren't arrogant; they're down-to-Earth.
And they understand issues that are important to me, like race and
class, because they grew up face-to-face with it like I did."
A winner of the history
department's Arthur N. Cook Memorial Prize for outstanding
contributions to the field of history and the Carolyn Karcher Prize for
academic excellence and commitment to progressive social activism and
social justice, April will graduate with a grade-point average of 3.9.
Never one to follow
conventional career or academic paths, April was determined to find a
way to continue her research after getting her degree without giving up
her political activism. The challenge: finding a way to fund her
studies in 2005 and 2006 while not enrolled in a graduate program. The
solution came late last year, when April received the first Ronald
Schwarzkopf Jewish Studies Award and Grant, which will support her
travel in the United States, Canada and Argentina, where she plans to
research responses to anti-Semitism among social movements.
"I
went to school to arm myself with the tools that will help with my
activism," April said. "I wanted to study history in order to make
history. There aren't many other places where I could have felt so
intellectually engaged while still being out here in the real world. Temple
gave me a place to be my whole self."
- Hillel Hoffmann
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