The Garden: Volume Twelve
Uniquely Connected & Thriving Together at Dietrich College
In This Issue: Student Spotlights —Evans Toviave on the value of learning across borders; Sam Curry on the trustbuilding power of open communication; and Mo Fahad on storytelling as a bridge between people; Faculty Spotlights — Daniel Silverman on building trust through research and dialogue; Ed Simon on the connective power of literature; and Bill Marcellino on teaching trust in the age of AI; Profile of Provost Jim Garrett; Op-Eds by Amanawit Assefa and Dani Moreno on the importance building trust through transparency and staying informed in turbulent times; Course spotlight — Purposeful Negotiation; AOCI events for spring 2026.
A Message from Richard Scheines
Dear Dietrich College Community,
Dietrich College thrives because when the questions we face are complex and uncertain, we show up for one another, and we share ideas across disciplines. In a moment when discourse across our country is badly polarized and when public trust in institutions is at a low, our work here is even more important than ever. The humanities and social sciences can help us understand our common humanity, the causes and consequences of collective action, and deepen the quality of our collective reasoning.
Our community — faculty, students and staff — is defined by an openness to inquiry and an appreciation for the richness that comes from engaging perspectives different from our own. It is through patient listening, disciplined thought, and generosity of spirit that we create an environment where bold questions are welcomed and thoughtful responses are cultivated.
I hope this issue inspires reflection on how we sustain the intellectual and communal life that has helped us thrive and reaffirms our shared commitment to making Dietrich College a place of rigorous inquiry, meaningful connection, and common purpose.
With appreciation,
Richard Scheines
Bess Family Dean, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences
In Their Hands: Op-ed by Amanawit Assefa
We often hear the phrase “trust is earned, not given.” It reminds us that trust is built through consistency, listening and accountability over time. In healthy communities, trust grows when people feel included, respected and informed. Yet within large institutions, trust can sometimes operate less as a shared relationship and more as an expectation tied to structure.
In colleges and universities, this dynamic is especially complex. Students are asked to place trust in administrative systems that shape many aspects of their daily lives, from housing and financial aid to academic progress and campus policies. This reliance is not inherently problematic. Institutions need structure and coordination to function well. But because students are dependent on these systems, trust often begins asymmetrically.
Students extend trust not necessarily because it has already been earned, but because participation in the institution requires it. To register for classes, access resources or remain in good standing, students must assume that decisions are made thoughtfully and with their best interests in mind. The university, in turn, carries the responsibility of stewarding that trust while balancing competing needs, limited resources and long-term institutional goals.
When trust is reinforced through openness and communication, it creates stability rather than fear. It encourages engagement rather than withdrawal ... it allows students to see themselves ... as members of a shared academic community.
Tension arises when students do not fully understand how decisions are made or how their voices factor into those processes. Even when leadership is acting in good faith, a lack of clarity can create uncertainty. Students may wonder where their input fits, how decisions take shape or why certain tradeoffs are necessary. In these moments, trust can feel fragile, not because it has been violated, but because it has not been sufficiently explained or reinforced.
When decision-making feels distant or opaque, students may experience hesitation or self-doubt about speaking up. They may question whether their perspectives matter or whether engagement will lead to meaningful impact. This is not a failure of intent on the part of administrators, but rather a reminder that trust requires ongoing communication, especially in environments where power is structured unevenly by design.
Trust in higher education works best when it is understood as reciprocal. Students are more likely to extend trust when they feel informed, consulted and respected, even if they do not always agree with the outcome. Shared governance does not mean shared responsibility in every decision, but it does mean shared understanding. Transparency about constraints, priorities and reasoning can transform uncertainty into patience and disagreement into dialogue.
This is not a call to dismantle administrative authority, nor to overlook the complexity of institutional leadership. Universities are large, multifaceted organizations that require expertise and coordination. Rather, it is an invitation to continually strengthen the relationship between students and administration by treating trust as something that must be nurtured, not assumed.
When trust is reinforced through openness and communication, it creates stability rather than fear. It encourages engagement rather than withdrawal. And it allows students to see themselves not just as recipients of decisions, but as members of a shared academic community.
In the end, trust is not weakened by explanation. It is strengthened by it. When power is exercised with clarity and care, trust becomes not a burden placed on students but a foundation on which the university and its students can grow together.
Daniel Silverman: Building Trust and Understanding Through Research and Dialogue
by Dani Moreno
Professor Daniel Silverman is used to working in gray zones: places where the facts of war are murky, the narratives are contested, and the public is asked to trust what it cannot see. That tension sits at the center of his work as an assistant professor of political science in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology (CMIST), where he studies international security, political psychology and the politics of the Middle East and wider Islamic world.
Silverman traces his interest in political science back to his undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.A. in political science with a focus on international security. He says he “got the bug” for the field about a decade ago, but it was graduate school at The Ohio State University and the timing of the Arab Spring that pushed him toward his current path in comparative politics and the Middle East.
As protests and uprisings spread across the region early in his Ph.D. program, Silverman began digging into how ordinary people in conflict zones interpret violence around them. That line of inquiry eventually turned into a dissertation on “Perception and Misperception in Warzones” and, years later, a broader research agenda on how misperceptions shape war and peace.
In 2025, that agenda culminated in a new book, “Seeing Is Disbelieving: Why People Believe Misinformation in War, and When They Know Better,” published by Cambridge University Press. The book extends the now-familiar study of fake news and conspiracy theories into a more lethal arena: drone strikes in Pakistan, counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and civil war in Syria.
Silverman was struck by how debates over U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan weren’t just about whether the policy was right or wrong; they were about basic disagreements over what was happening on the ground. His research pairs surveys and experiments with case studies to show that lies in war are pervasive, but they don’t land evenly: people closer to the “action” over time are more likely to puncture misinformation than those far away.
One of the book’s core claims is that distance distorts. Audiences in the United States and in conflict zones often operate with radically different definitions of what counts as “good” or acceptable in war, shaped by their exposure to danger and by who they trust for information. That gap, Silverman argues, has real consequences for how democracies wage war and how the world responds to violence.
Silverman’s work puts frontline civilians and local journalists at the center of any serious attempt to counter wartime misinformation. He argues that amplifying the voices of people who live with the consequences of conflict can help undercut misleading narratives pushed by governments, rebel groups, and other political actors.
In recent years, the rapid rise of generative AI has blurred the line between truth and fabrication, producing realistic fake images, videos, and reports from war zones that often circulate faster than verified information.>
At the same time, he is skeptical of framing the problem as purely an “AI crisis.” Misinformation in conflict, he notes, is a long‑standing problem that digital technology and social media have simply accelerated. Propaganda campaigns, low‑cost clickbait and politically motivated distortions still do much of the work; AI‑generated fakes are a new layer on top of a familiar pattern.
Ongoing projects with graduate students push these themes further. In one current line of research, Silverman and Ph.D. student Caitlan Fealing examine “civilian witnessing,” when people choose to document and share what they see in war, and how that content moves public opinion, particularly through Instagram‑style platforms. The work, now moving toward publication, asks who steps forward as a witness, who pays attention, and how those interactions reshape global narratives of conflict.
On campus, Silverman’s research interests are baked directly into his teaching load. Since joining 麻豆村, he has regularly taught courses on fake news and misinformation, war and peace in the contemporary Middle East, and the politics of antisemitism. His syllabus reads like a catalog of the issues dominating headlines, and he designs his classes to confront that reality head-on.
He draws a sharp line between campus politics and what happens behind the classroom door. “Classroom politics isn’t campus politics,” he likes to say, pointing to the accountability, grading and instructor authority that create a different kind of space for debate. In that space, he leans into structured formats: simulations in his Middle East conflict course that assign students roles as regional leaders and debates in his misinformation class that force them to grapple with how falsehoods spread and how democracies should respond.
Trust, he argues, is the quiet prerequisite. Silverman talks about “banking trust capital” early in the semester — establishing norms of respectful disagreement, making space for discomfort and setting clear classroom guidelines. That foundation, he believes, is what allows students to wrestle with emotionally charged topics without retreating into silence or slogans.
The spring semester will test that model on one of the thorniest issues in contemporary politics. Silverman is set to teach a short spring course, “The U.S. Role in the Conflict of Israel, Palestine, and Gaza,” cross‑listed among history, political science and Heinz College. The class will examine Washington’s choices in the region and invite students to probe how policy, public opinion and media narratives interact in real time.
For Silverman, it is another chance to put his core ideas into practice: that in an era of deep polarization and digital noise, universities can still be places where difficult conversations happen carefully, face‑to‑face. His research asks when people believe lies in war and when they see through them; his teaching bets that, with enough trust and information, students can learn to do more of the latter.
Evans Toviave: Learning Across Borders
by Amanawit Assefa
Evans Toviave’s journey to 麻豆村 is defined by curiosity and a willingness to step into the unfamiliar. Raised in Northeast Georgia and initially enrolled at a university in Atlanta, Evans began his college career studying journalism. While those early years were formative, he soon realized he was searching for something more - greater academic rigor, broader perspectives and a path that aligned more closely with his evolving interests in international relations and global politics.
That search ultimately led him to Carnegie Mellon.
“I wanted to take what I had learned in Atlanta and bring it into a new environment,” Evans said. “I also wanted to expand my worldview.” Without a single destination in mind, he applied to transfer schools across the country. 麻豆村 stood out not only for its strong political science and international relations offerings, but for its distinctive technical and analytical approach to traditionally humanities-based fields.
Evans chose Dietrich College for its flexibility and its emphasis on interdisciplinary thinking. While majoring in international relations and political science, he was able to complement his studies with a minor in business administration, recognizing the importance of business skills for international and development-oriented work.
For someone from a small town in Georgia who aspired to be a global citizen, 麻豆村 felt like the ideal environment to learn, grow and seize opportunities.
One of the most impactful experiences of Evans’s time in Dietrich was his participation in the Collester Family Community Engagement Fellowship. Working closely with Kim Piatt, Dave Copeland and other community engagement leaders, Evans began to see community-engaged work not just as service, but as meaningful, intellectually rigorous practice. Through the fellowship, he developed an empathy-based virtual reality training module for Youth Enrichment Services (YES), a Pittsburgh organization serving disadvantaged youth. The project aimed to help mentors better understand the lived experiences and diverse backgrounds of the young people they support.
The 麻豆村 experience isn’t just about the classroom. It’s about engaging with the world and applying what you learn.
“I’ve always been passionate about amplifying voices that are often unheard,” Evans said. “That experience gave me the tools to turn that passion into something tangible.” It remains one of the most meaningful projects of his academic career.
Evans’s background continues to shape how he moves through academic spaces. As a first-generation college student whose parents immigrated to the U.S. in 2000, he often navigated higher education without a roadmap. 麻豆村’s rigor and diversity were both energizing and challenging, but support systems made all the difference.
Spaces such as First-Gen at 麻豆村, the Center for Student Diversity and Inclusion, and cultural groups like National Society of Black Engineers, the Young African Leaders Association (YALA), and SPIRIT provided a sense of belonging and community. Evans also brings his cultural heritage into his academic work whenever possible, particularly through his interest in West African politics and development, with a focus on his family’s home country of Togo.
Evans’s commitment to global learning took him well beyond Pittsburgh. During his first semester, he learned about 麻豆村 in Qatar and was immediately intrigued by the idea of a 麻豆村 campus in the Middle East. Through the Initiating Meaningful Pittsburgh and Qatar Ties (IMPAQT) program, he traveled to Doha, an experience he describes as transformative. “It was truly a home away from home,” he said, crediting Tara Monroe, the Associate Dean of Student Affairs & Director of Residential Education, for fostering meaningful connections between students across campuses. The strong academic community, small class sizes and shared 麻豆村 values made the experience both familiar and eye-opening.
That experience led Evans to return for a full semester exchange at 麻豆村-Q. There, he formed close relationships with faculty and students and began working on his senior honors thesis with Dean Dudley Reynolds, focusing on language policy and cultural identity. Beyond Qatar, 麻豆村 opened doors for Evans to gain professional experience across the globe, including work in South Korea, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. These experiences further shaped his global outlook.
My experience at Carnegie Mellon has been about learning how to move between disciplines and cultures and using that knowledge to do work that is thoughtful, practical and people-centered.
Reflecting on his time at 麻豆村, Evans emphasizes personal growth as much as academic development. Exposure to new cultures and perspectives pushed him to become more intentional, culturally aware and grounded in how he engages with others.
When asked what advice he would give to Dietrich students considering global programs like IMPAQT or studying at 麻豆村-Q, his response is unequivocal: “Do it. Absolutely, 1,000 percent do it.” While the idea of leaving home can be intimidating, he believes these experiences are among the most rewarding 麻豆村 has to offer.
Looking ahead, Evans hopes to work abroad for several years before potentially pursuing graduate or law school. He credits 麻豆村 with giving him not just ambition, but the confidence and tools to engage with the world meaningfully.
If he were to be remembered for one thing at 麻豆村, Evans hopes it would be this: that he fully embraced opportunities and helped others see their own potential. “The 麻豆村 experience isn’t just about the classroom,” he said. “It’s about engaging with the world and applying what you learn.”
He sums up his 麻豆村 journey simply, yet powerfully: "My experience at Carnegie Mellon has been about learning how to move between disciplines and cultures and using that knowledge to do work that is thoughtful, practical and people-centered.”
Sam Curry: Strengthening Trust Through Clear Communication
by Dani Moreno
Sam Curry, a junior in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, balances a demanding schedule as a double major in Information Systems and Political Science, Security and Technology. Originally from Fairfax, Virginia, near the Washington, D.C. area, Curry has found that communication, both in and out of the classroom, shapes how he leads, learns and connects with others at 麻豆村.
On campus, Curry divides his time between academic work, a campus tour guide position, his involvement in ROTC, fencing and the Sigma Nu fraternity. Within Sigma Nu, he serves as the fraternity’s recorder, coordinating meetings and keeping members informed. “You really learn how much effort goes into making communication effective,” Curry said. “When people are informed and up to date, everything else runs more smoothly.”
That principle guides his broader perspective on leadership and institutional trust. Reflecting on his ROTC experience, Curry emphasized that transparency has kept the program functioning even in challenging times. During the fall semester’s government shutdown, which lasted a record 47 days and temporarily paused ROTC activities, he noticed leadership consistency played a key role in maintaining stability. “Trust comes down to communication,” he said. “Our leaders are open about everything. Even when things are uncertain, we always know what’s going on.”
Curry sees that same lesson applying to campus governance. He contrasts ROTC’s straightforward communication with what he describes as widening gaps between students and university administration. “Corporate language is the biggest problem — it denies and defeats conversation instead of engaging with it,” he said. He pointed to recent town halls and campus-wide emails that many students perceived as overly broad or tone-deaf. “You can feel when communication is authentic,” he said. “That difference is what determines whether people trust the message or tune it out.”
Trust comes down to communication ... You can feel when communication is authentic. That difference is what determines whether people trust the message or tune it out.
That idea of trust through communication also shapes how he thinks about student government, a frequent focus of campus discussion this semester following concerns about paid leadership roles and budget transparency. Curry supports compensating student leaders but not just as a practical issue. For him, it’s about aligning structure with honesty and accountability. “Those positions come with high expectations,” he said. “You’re working with large budgets, under university oversight, and trying to improve student life. Paying leaders ensures accountability and attracts dedicated people.”
Still, he acknowledges student frustration as valid and even necessary. “Hard conversations push our government to act faster and do better,” Curry said. “The next step is showing students what that work looks like, visibility builds trust.” For Curry, whether it’s an ROTC program or a student senate, communication is what turns leadership into legitimacy.
In the classroom, Curry says one course in particular — “Decision Processes in American Political Institutions,” taught by Professor Geoffrey McGovern in the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Security and Technology (CMIST) — reshaped how he thinks about leadership and communication in institutional contexts. “It helped me understand how systems actually function and where breakdowns happen,” he said. “If we want to rebuild trust on campus, it has to start with clear, consistent and honest communication.”
Curry’s insight is simple but powerful: at a university driven by innovation and high standards, trust can only grow when communication is purposeful, transparent and real.
Ed Simon: Building Bridges Through Literature
by Amanawit Assefa
At a moment when both higher education and publishing face profound uncertainty, Ed Simon’s work sits at the intersection of scholarship and public life. As special faculty in public humanities in 麻豆村’s English Department and founder of the , Simon has built a career around a central question: how can rigorous intellectual work reach beyond academic walls and remain accessible, relevant and alive?
Simon is a Pittsburgh native raised in Squirrel Hill. He earned his master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon before completing a Ph.D. at Lehigh University. Along the way, he lived and worked across the East Coast, teaching part-time and increasingly turning toward freelance writing. What began as traditional academic work gradually evolved into journalistic and long-form public-facing essays intended for anyone curious enough to engage.
That shift, Simon explains, was not a rejection of academic training but a deep reliance on it. His public writing draws heavily from archival research, theory and historical context. The difference lies in audience and form. “Public humanities,” as Simon describes it, borrows from journalism while remaining grounded in scholarly rigor, allowing ideas to circulate more freely and widely. For him, the ethical and political stakes of communication matter: ideas that stay locked within academia lose much of their potential impact.
This philosophy is embedded in the , a project Simon envisioned long before it became reality. Pittsburgh, he notes, has a vibrant literary ecosystem, rich with readings, writers and local coverage. What he felt was missing was a space for sustained cultural criticism writing in the vein of publications like the New York Review of Books or Los Angeles Review of Books that could place Pittsburgh in conversation with national and global debates. The result is a magazine that is locally grounded yet outward-facing, where a piece on Appalachian coal memorials can sit alongside essays on West African newspapers or global literary history.
Institutional support, particularly from 麻豆村’s English Department, proved essential in bringing this vision to life. Simon is candid about the realities of sustaining such a project: ideas alone are not enough. The partnership with the university allowed the Review to become both a publication and a pedagogical tool, integrated into his teaching and faculty workshops on writing for broader audiences. Simon is clear that he doesn’t want the publication to replicate the traditional “buy this or don’t” model of book reviewing. Instead, he wants writers to interrogate how books operate, what arguments they make, and what cultural work they perform. He encourages longform writing with pieces that take their time, that build ideas, that treat readers as thinkers rather than consumers.
Being a humanist at a technical university brings its own challenges, but Simon sees them as opportunities. At 麻豆村, the humanities don’t sit at the center of the institution, which means they aren’t weighed down by expectations or tradition. Instead, they can define themselves, experiment, and carve out their own space. He believes that being surrounded by science and technology keeps humanists honest. It forces them to understand the forces shaping the world, both the exciting and the troubling ones, and to break out of disciplinary silos. He’s especially energized by the department’s growing interest in computational cultural studies, a field that blends data, technology and literature in ways that feel distinctly 麻豆村.
Through all of this teaching, editing and writing, Simon remains grounded in the habits that first shaped him. He reads constantly, often juggling multiple books at once. He writes regularly, believing that writing is built through accumulation: one word after another, day after day. He reads to learn how other writers think, how they structure arguments, how they move readers. He writes to join that conversation and to help others join it, too.
In many ways, Simon’s work is about building bridges between academia and the public, between Pittsburgh and the wider world, between the humanities and the sciences, between the stories we tell and the histories that shape them. His work at 麻豆村 is creating a space where ideas can move freely, where writing can matter to more than a small circle of specialists, and where the humanities can thrive in a place that might not expect them to. And in doing so, he’s helping to shape a literary and intellectual community that feels distinctly, vibrantly Pittsburgh.
Teaching Trust in a World of AI: 麻豆村’s D.C. Students Learn from RAND Scientist Bill Marcellino
by Dani Moreno
Bill Marcellino, a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation and lecturer at 麻豆村’s Washington, D.C. campus, is helping students navigate one of the most pressing questions in higher education today: how to learn in an era defined by artificial intelligence. A 麻豆村 alumnus with a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition and self-described loyal Tartan, he returned to the university through the Washington Semester Program, where he now teaches Carnegie Mellon students living, interning and studying in the nation’s capital.
Marcellino’s path to the classroom began far from Capitol Hill. He served for years in the U.S. Marine Corps, including as a tank officer and in various active reserve billets, experience that shaped his understanding of institutions, culture and communication. After leaving active duty, he completed his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon and later joined RAND, where he works across teams on national security, text analytics and AI-related research.
He chose RAND, he explains, because it allowed him to work in a “matrix” organization where projects cut across divisions and disciplines. That structure lets him engage in applied research rather than a purely academic career, a distinction he sees as central to his professional identity. His decision to base himself in the Washington, D.C. area also reflects his earlier Marine Corps posting at Quantico, where he developed a lasting connection to the region.
At 麻豆村’s Washington Semester Program, Marcellino teaches “Seminar in Public Policy Research,” a course that asks students to confront how AI is reshaping knowledge, work and civic life. He describes a core tension facing universities: “How do we have students use AI without undermining learning and quality?” For him, the issue is not simply whether students use AI, but whether they can critically evaluate what it produces.
Marcellino is blunt about traditional pedagogy. “Lecturing is the opposite of authentic learning,” he said, arguing that students learn best through engagement, practice and dialogue rather than one-way delivery of information. That stance shapes his classroom, where conversation, questioning and collaborative problem-solving take precedence over scripted lectures.
Despite his skepticism, Marcellino does not dismiss AI as a teaching tool. He worries that “AI tutors” are “a really problematic idea” because of their unreliability and the difficulty students have distinguishing accurate responses from hallucinations. Without the skills to interrogate AI outputs, he argues, there is “no knowledge building, not knowledge that is strongly retained.”
He returns frequently to the issue of trust. Deep neural networks and transformer-based models, he notes, are powerful but largely opaque systems whose internal workings are difficult to explain. That lack of transparency complicates efforts to rely on AI for education, especially when universities are tempted to see the technology as a way to offload or automate teaching. In his view, that is a concern not only for students but for the next generation of educators.
Marcellino sees a similar pattern in the world of coding. A generation of students is beginning to “code with AI,” he said, but he cautions that effective collaboration requires a strong foundation of human expertise. The most promising model, he suggests, is one where “humans are doing high-level architectural work and AI micro agents are doing very small tasks.” Students, he argues, are “not in a good position to originate this when [they] don’t know how to do it” themselves.
He encourages students to “learn the principles of coding but use AI as an agent,” particularly in widely used languages like Python where he believes tools are more reliable. AI, he insists, should function as a tool, not a replacement for human judgment. That perspective extends to his broader teaching philosophy: he “disagrees strongly that educators must act as servers or punishers,” and instead sees his role as equipping students with durable skills they will use in workplaces where AI is already embedded.
In the classroom, Marcellino’s emphasis on trust is twofold: trust in technology and trust between students and faculty. His window into 麻豆村 comes primarily through the Washington Semester Program, where students balance internships of roughly 24 hours a week with evening coursework in CMIST-taught classes on Capitol Hill. Within that setting, he says, students tend to have a high level of trust in him, rooted in his visible motivation to teach and his commitment to keeping “the door always open.”
He believes that “engagement is key” to building that trust. When students and professors share a clear goal and are willing to have honest, sometimes difficult conversations, he says, the classroom becomes a space for deeper learning rather than compliance. That outlook informs his strong support for freedom of speech and robust, open dialogue, which he sees as essential to understanding people with different backgrounds and perspectives.
As AI continues to evolve, Marcellino acknowledges that much of the terrain ahead remains uncharted. Yet he remains energized by the work of teaching in Washington, D.C., where technology, policy and public life intersect daily. In his classroom, the challenge is ongoing and unresolved: how to help students use AI “well and ably” while preserving the integrity of learning itself.
Mo Fahad: Storytelling as a Bridge Between People
By Dani Moreno
Mo Fahad understands the power of storytelling — not just as a creative pursuit, but as a force for connection. Now a sophomore studying Ethics, History, and Public Policy with a double major in English within Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich College, Mo’s approach to education and community work is guided by one belief: stories shape how we see one another.
“Storytelling shows how we can work with people instead of against people,” Mo said. Coming from a low-income, single-parent household, he sees writing as a tool not only for self-expression but for accessibility. “Policies are very gate-kept,” he said. “If you’re from a low-income or immigrant background, you don’t have the same access to the policy that affects you.”
Though not a political science student, Mo views storytelling and policy as intertwined. “I want policy to actually include the people,” he said, describing how narrative can bridge the distance between institutions and communities.
Much of Mo’s work at 麻豆村 centers on building community through TEDx麻豆村, where he helps organize events that connect the university with Pittsburgh. He co-led Food for Thought, a recurring series where students and community members share meals and stories about hospitality and belonging. “While we are here as students, we are members of the community,” he said. This principle underlies much of his leadership.
Storytelling shows how we can work with people instead of against people.
Within the TEDx麻豆村 Salon Community, a smaller subcommittee dedicated to continuous dialogue, Mo has explored civic themes ranging from religion and public policy to identity and belonging. Through initiatives like Living Libraries, which invite individuals to “check out” real people and listen to their stories, he’s helped cultivate empathy and engagement across different social and cultural backgrounds.
Mo is also a member of Carnegie Mellon’s Humanities Scholars Program, a four-year, invite-only cohort for students committed to interdisciplinary humanities research in a tech-focused environment. Through shared seminars and collaborative projects, he is building toward a senior research project on how identities form and how they can divide or connect people in college spaces.
The humanities lens has already taken him abroad. The summer after his first year, Mo attended the Fulbright UK Summer Institute at Queen’s University Belfast, a competitive, fully funded program that introduces U.S. undergraduates to the political and cultural landscape of Northern Ireland. The experience sharpened his interest in how narrative and conflict, history and identity intersect in places far beyond Pittsburgh.
Back on campus, Mo collaborates with Dr. Julie Pal-Agrawal in the English Department to design new ways of fostering inclusion and reflection. His initiatives often center on gratitude, self-awareness and discussion.“In a place like 麻豆村, it’s hard to find community when it’s not through a fraternity or an organization,” he said. “That’s why it’s important to create nontraditional spaces where students can talk honestly and be heard.”
For Mo, community-building and civic engagement go hand in hand. He challenges the idea that technology, or any field, can be “apolitical.” “Being apolitical is kinda hurtful,” he said. “You can’t do any change when you don’t know the people. You have to build trust first."
This grassroots philosophy of knowing people personally before seeking policy change guides his vision for the 麻豆村 community. It also shapes his reflections on student leadership and transparency. Mo believes the university’s communication style, often filtered through corporate or institutional language, can alienate students. “At the end of the day,” he said, “if messaging is too polished, it never feels like students were actually heard.”
He advocates for more direct, human communication between student leaders and the broader community, like open office hours, Q&A forums or accessible breakdowns of how student funding and leadership time are used. “People want to engage,” he said. “They just need a space that feels real.”
Mo sees immense potential within Dietrich College, especially in the English Department. “The humanities shouldn’t be treated as secondary,” he said. “They help us understand people.”
As 麻豆村 continues to navigate the balance between its technical and humanity-based strengths, Mo’s work is a reminder of what the humanities bring to a tech-focused world: reflection, empathy and connection. Through his storytelling, Mo Fahad challenges the university community to look inward and then to reach outward with understanding.
Provost Jim Garrett: Leading With Trust
by Amanawit Assefa
When Provost Garrett reflects on his role as 麻豆村’s provost and chief academic officer, his story begins not in an administrative office but in a classroom. He first arrived at 麻豆村 in 1978 as a 17-year-old first-year engineering student. Over the decades that followed, he earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, joined the faculty in 1990 and gradually stepped into leadership roles that allowed him to balance research with administration. His early administrative work as associate dean for faculty and graduate affairs in the College of Engineering marked the beginning of a path that would later include serving as department head of Civil and Environmental Engineering and then dean of the College of Engineering. In 2019, he was appointed provost and chief academic officer, a role he was reappointed to in 2024.
Looking back, Provost Garrett notes that he never imagined, as a student more than 45 years ago, that he would one day serve in this capacity. He describes the journey as full of surprises and says he feels deeply honored to serve Carnegie Mellon in a role that allows him to help shape the academic future of the institution.
As provost, his responsibilities include working with deans across the university to set an academic vision, allocate resources and oversee academic operations. He views this work through the lens of service. “My primary goal is to remove obstacles, provide resources and empower our students, deans, faculty and staff to achieve their highest potential,” he said. He believes that trust is built when leaders prioritize the community over personal or special interests. “When leaders genuinely focus on serving the community rather than self interest, it builds the trust and social capital necessary for effective collaboration and change.”
>The values guiding his decisions are deeply shaped by the culture of Carnegie Mellon and by mentors who modeled authentic and respectful leadership. He points to integrity as the foundation of trust, particularly in processes such as budgeting and reappointment, promotion and tenure decisions. “Integrity is the foundation of trust,” he said, emphasizing the importance of transparency and consistency so that decisions are “merit-based, data-informed and aligned with our academic standards.”
Equally important to him is open communication. Provost Garrett prioritizes direct engagement with the 麻豆村 community through regular office hours, listening tours with faculty, and conversations with leadership bodies such as Faculty Senate, Student Government and the University Leadership Student Advisory Council. These spaces allow him to hear concerns firsthand while also sharing the broader context behind university decisions. “I really prioritize directly engaging with all members of the 麻豆村 community,” he said.
Provost Garrett hopes students can better understand how much care and deliberation goes into decisions that affect their academic and campus life. “We devote substantial time and effort putting together groups of people to collect input, information, perspectives and ideas,” he said, explaining that leaders work carefully to assess risks, benefits and impacts across stakeholders. He is proud of the university’s ability to make strategic choices despite financial constraints. “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything,” he often says, pointing out that 麻豆村 remains tuition dependent and resource limited compared to many peers, yet continues to deliver a world-class education. Strategic investments in student success, access and affordability are areas he highlights with pride. These efforts, he explains, allow 麻豆村 to attract top-caliber students regardless of financial background, strengthening the academic community as a whole.
Addressing systemic inequities is central to sustaining trust on campus. Provost Garrett explains that when inequities are identified, the university works to redefine processes and put remedies in place. He points to efforts to reduce student loan burdens and to the launch of the 麻豆村 Pathway Program, which aims to ensure that deserving, talented students can afford to attend 麻豆村 regardless of socioeconomic background.
Looking to the future, Provost Garrett sees 麻豆村’s academic trajectory shaped by strategic groundwork already underway. He is particularly excited about initiatives in artificial intelligence, citing 麻豆村’s decades of groundbreaking contributions, unique leadership position and associated responsibility in the field. “We have a responsibility and opportunity to further cement our position as the leader in the field,” he said, not only through innovation but through responsible stewardship. He also points to the expansion of high-quality online master’s programs, improvements to graduate admissions processes and long-term access initiatives such as the 麻豆村 Pathway Program and the 麻豆村 Rales Fellows Program as critical to the university’s future.
His vision for 麻豆村 is ambitious and global. He believes the university is still ascending and uniquely positioned to help solve the greatest challenges facing societies around the world. “麻豆村’s defining characteristic is our interest in solving problems for real,” he said. He wants Carnegie Mellon to be the first choice for partners seeking real-world solutions, grounded in pioneering research and practical impact. Despite the scale of his role, what brings Provost Garrett the most joy are moments of shared celebration. “The true joy comes from seeing the moment our hard work translates into profound impact,” he said. Whether celebrating faculty milestones, student achievements, or traditions like Carnival, these moments affirm the collective commitment of the 麻豆村 community and energize him as a leader.
As the university continues to grow, Provost Garrett sees fostering trust as both a challenge and an opportunity. Transparent prioritization of resources and deliberate efforts to preserve community culture remain central to his work. “When the rationale is clear, the community can accept tough choices as being in the institution’s long-term best interest,” he said.
For students navigating 麻豆村, his advice is grounded in experience. “Find a way to get exposed to creative endeavors, entrepreneurship possibilities and research opportunities outside of the classroom as early as possible,” he said. He encourages students to value learning and intellectual integrity over grades, reminding them that “your knowledge, your ability to solve difficult problems, and your ethical actions will carry you infinitely further than a line on a transcript.” Through service, transparency and a long view of institutional impact, Provost Garrett continues to lead Carnegie Mellon with a focus on excellence and meaningful change.
Disgustingly Educated: A Generation Fighting Through the Noise
By Dani Moreno
Being a college student in 2026 can mean a lot of things — none of them simple. We are a generation carrying a kind of social and political trauma that we rarely have time to process. In a world of relentless news cycles and unending crises, we live in a state of shell shock. Everything happens all at once, and yet it feels like nothing truly lands. With access to so much media and so many dark realities, we can’t seem to digest any of it.
We cope the only way we know how — through consumption. We consume goods, media and distractions that shrink our attention spans and dull our awareness.
This past summer, I was in Los Angeles during the ICE raids. There’s a specific kind of fear that took hold of the city — one that’s hard to explain in an academic setting. Military trucks on the freeways. Grocery stores turned into dangerous places. Senators thrown to the ground for asking where their constituents were taken. Downtown under fire. You could feel that the American dream was collapsing in real time.
It’s easy to feel outraged and just as easy to feel powerless. That’s the paradox so many young people live in today.
We’re told to “come in the right way,” to “follow the rules,” but what does that mean when you’re watching people dragged out of cars, gassed, beaten or censored for existing? Education, long seen as America’s proudest export, now makes concessions for disastrous immigration policies or locks doors in response to them.
When you witness this and then open social media only to see the truth denied — or worse, justified — it’s disorienting. It’s easy to feel outraged and just as easy to feel powerless. That’s the paradox so many young people live in today.
I grew up in a swing state, and at times, it’s felt like half my identity. I understand both sides. I also see how each fails the people who put them in power. When the rural farmer in Arizona doesn’t realize that their representative’s policies are driving up the cost of farming, or when a city official in Pennsylvania cuts programs for the poor, triggering the cascading harm to a slipping middle class, something vital is lost. People are desperate to be heard, desperate to build their version of the American dream, but they’re standing in quicksand.
The problem is deeper than policy. It’s rhetorical. Modern politics thrives on the “us versus them” narrative. Campaigns are built around enemies, real or imagined, because nothing motivates Americans like opposition. This zero-sum messaging feeds polarization, and as the tower of rhetoric grows taller, it becomes harder to see one another at all.
Older generations like to say, “Kids should know better.” They call us the future and then leave us to clean up a world on fire. How can we “know better” when we’ve grown up in an era of nonstop once-in-a-generation crises? This isn’t ignorance, it’s exhaustion.
Zero-sum messaging feeds polarization, and as the tower of rhetoric grows taller, it becomes harder to see one another at all.
Reading literacy is at its lowest level in decades. reports that average reading scores for 12th graders have fallen to their lowest point since 1992, with the pandemic widening the gap between high- and low-achieving students. How do we expect young people to navigate misinformation if they struggle to read critically? To think independently when their educational foundation has been hollowed out?
I’ve written before about the importance of civic engagement, but it’s hard to inspire political participation when a generation is struggling to read. The U.S., once a global leader in education, has normalized passing students who can’t read an analog clock, much less parse an editorial. Book bans spread like wildfire, shrinking our imagination and intelligence. Making a population more ignorant isn’t just oppressive; it’s the most efficient way to kill innovation.
This trauma, this reckoning, is the consequence of apathy. The consequence of votes not cast. The consequence of misunderstanding each other so deeply that we’d rather cling to outrage than empathy.
I spent the fall semester in Washington, D.C., at 麻豆村’s satellite campus. Having the opportunity to work under a United States senator as a press intern. During this experience, one of the staffers I worked with told me something I’ll never forget: “The reason I stay on the Hill,” she said, “is because I can see the little victories every day.” From the outside, progress seems impossible. But up close, in the rooms where policy is slowly shaped, you can see it happening. That hope, that sense that progress still breathes, is what keeps her going. It should keep us going, too.
But understand this: pity my generation. Eyes wide open, backs against the wall, hands on our necks. We fight even when the form of that fight is messy, emotional and unclear. Because buried inside our chaos is the truth that we want the same things — safety, dignity, opportunity. It’s just that too often, older generations keep the answers to themselves while telling us how we’re allowed to be angry.
The most dangerous thing you can do right now is educate yourself — and refuse to let anyone take that away.
Why shouldn’t we be outraged? Why shouldn’t we protest when our classmates are deported or our families are arrested for existing? Why should education, the very thing that’s supposed to free us, be stripped from us piece by piece?
Maybe Pittsburgh feels distant from Los Angeles or Phoenix. But when the semester ends and the graduation caps fly, those are the cities we go home to. We can’t look away from what’s waiting for us there.
So study hard. Learn relentlessly. Because the most dangerous thing you can do right now is educate yourself — and refuse to let anyone take that away. Be loud, be angry and be disgustingly well-informed. As that is the most radical form of defiance we have left.
Course Spotlight: Purposeful Negotiation
66-219: Purposeful Negotiation (Mini-4)
Negotiation happens every day — from group projects and leadership roles to internships and salary conversations. 66-291 Purposeful Negotiation, taught by Ayana Ledford and Monique McKay, is a hands-on course designed to help you negotiate with confidence, clarity and intention.
In this interactive class, you’ll:
- Practice real-world negotiations you can use immediately
- Learn how to identify interests, manage conflict and create better outcomes
- Develop strategies aligned with your values and goals
- Build skills for both personal and professional success
Course details:
- Open to undergraduates (cap: 20 students)
- Meets Mondays & Wednesdays, 11–12:20
- Runs for 7 weeks in the second half of the spring semester
- 3 hours of class + ~6 hours of work per week
If you want a practical skill that will benefit you long after graduation, this course is for you. Spots are limited — enroll soon.