American Magazine: November 2016

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FIRST LADIES PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES AIRLIE HOUSE PHOTO: WOLFRAM BURNER
Since Martha Washington first
knit socks for Revolutionary War
soldiers, America’s first ladies
have always supported military
troops and their families.
First Lady Michelle Obama
and former First Lady Laura
Bush discussed their work on
behalf of US service members,
veterans, and their families
during a September conference
at the National Archives,
cosponsored by AU. “America’s
First Ladies: In Service to Our
Nation,” part of AU’s Legacies of
America’s First Ladies Initiative,
was moderated by ABC News
journalist Bob Woodruff, who
suffered a serious head injury 10
years ago while embedded with
troops in Iraq.
“I love shining a spotlight
on first ladies and their work.
They have been engaged in
very meaningful things and had
to balance a public life with a
private life,” says conference
chair Anita McBride, executive in
residence at the School of Public
Affairs. “The panel [showed] the
continuity and the thread that
binds all of them together. They
feel the responsibility and the
challenge to do right by the men
and women who serve.”
Obama reflected on the
“sobering experience” of visiting
wounded patients at military
hospitals. “That’s something that
a commander in chief thinks
about before they pop off about
going to war, because when
you’ve spent time on a base and
you know these men and women
and you know their families you
don’t just talk about war like
there are no implications.”
The historic Airlie Center—
a meeting and conference
destination in Warrenton,
Virginia, dubbed “an island of
thought” by LIFE magazine—
has been gifted to AU by the
Airlie board of directors.
Nestled 50 miles west of DC, the 300-acre property includes the
Airlie house and a village of guest rooms and meeting facilities. For
more than 50 years, global leaders, heads of state, diplomats,
Bush, whose time at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue spanned
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
said the troops were always on
her mind.
“You worry in the White House
when you know that there are
troops in harm’s way, and you
think about them every single
night,” she said. “And there,
where you’re in the lap of
luxury, really—beautiful house
where your sheets are changed
every single day—you think
when you get in bed about our
troops laying out on the ground
somewhere.”
and activists have convened at Airlie for conferences and programs
dedicated to social progress, education, public health, and
environmental research. The facility hosted the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund’s first annual conference in 1962 and was the place
where, in 1969, Senator Gaylord Nelson made public his concept
of Earth Day.
In recent years, Airlie has focused on becoming a destination for
personal travel.
“The university is honored to have been selected for this
wonderful gift,” President Neil Kerwin says. “It is our intent to
carry on the very impressive and important legacy of Airlie, while
leveraging this marvelous facility for American University’s
academic initiatives.”
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
KEEPING IT CLASSY
More than half of black and Latino residents in the DC area’s most diverse neighborhoods fear that
they or their loved ones will be arrested or questioned by the police, according to a new
study by SPA’s Metropolitan Policy Center. The first-of-its-kind survey of 1,200 households
“provides a detailed snapshot of the social realities and inequalities that exist within the region,”
says center director Derek Hyra.
AU is No. 16 on classy.org’s list of most innovative social
entrepreneurship programs. Classy, an online fundraising
platform for social impact organizations, praised Kogod’s
certificate in entrepreneurship and SIS’s master’s in
social enterprise. AU is the top DC school on the list.
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