John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies

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Student Board

Students at the John F. Kennedy Institute: Student Role and Voluntary Activities

Students' voluntary involvement at the JFKI is, due to the many responsibilities students face, constantly changing. However, despite the fact that term papers, essays, internships and student jobs must sometimes be given priority, extracurricular student involvement has become a steady and lively part of the institution.

There are numerous ways JFKI students can get involved in life at the institute:

• The "student board", the student council of the JFKI, consists of approximately 10-15 students who meet regularly to discuss what is going on at the institute. They also plan activities such as the annual summer fest and actively participate in university commissions. The group is open to anyone who is interested in participating.
• Student representatives: two JFKI-students are elected members of the "Institutsrat", the institute's decision-making body. In addition to that, one student of the JFKI has also been elected member of the "StuPa", the University Parliament of the Freie Universität Berlin, in the last election.
• For those who are not so interested in university politics, but would still like to have an active role at the institute, helping out in the "Caféte" is a great opportunity to be involved. The cozy café, run only by students, is the heart of the institute and provides students as well as staff with coffee, chocolate and freshly made sandwiches.
• Learning without the pressure to achieve and discussing and exchanging ideas with fellow students: that's the idea of the students' seminar. The student board normally organizes one seminar per semester. In previous years, topics such as alternative media, American subcultures, foreign policy and security policy after 9/11 as well as US-Latin American relations have been discussed. In a reading seminar, students also analyzed Noam Chomsky's and Edward Herman's work "Manufacturing Consent", in which the authors develop a propaganda model and elaborate on the problem of "corporate media". Under the title "The Real Life", in 2006, the student board organized a seminar in the form of weekly excursions where the participants took a look behind the scenes of such organizations as the German Marshall Fund, the German Foreign Office and both the US and the Canadian embassies.

If you want to contact the students at the JFKI, send an email to jfkistudents@yahoo.de.