User:Jbphilips

Joe Philipson is a junior at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where he is double-majoring in Political Science and Religion. Thus far, his primary concentrations in those areas have been United States politics, Christianity (especially “evangelical” Christianity), race, difference, and inter-group relations. Professionally, Philipson works primarily with Tufts Hillel in planning major campus-wide or community-wide programs focusing on social justice issues and the Holocaust with the Cummings/Hillel Program for Genocide and Holocaust Education, and the Merrin Family Moral Voices Program. He also works as a student assistant with the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts, helping to plan regular and high-impact events and working as a research assistant to the Center’s director, Dr. Peniel E. Joseph. Joe has also worked in strategic planning and communications with the Office of the President at Tufts, under President Anthony P. Monaco.

Before returning to Tufts in January 2014, Joe studied at the University of Chile and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, Chile as part of the Tufts-in-Chile program. Joe also worked as an intern with Mensaje, the Jesuit journal of the Republic of Chile, and with their online subsidiary, Mirada Global. There, he assisted in web design, content generation, and building relationships with other Jesuit journals in Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Cuba.

In the past, Joe has worked as an assistant to Judge Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, Illinois, working primarily with Judge Williams’ extra-professional interests with the University of Notre Dame Law School and the Just the Beginning Foundation. In addition, he has served as a student legal intern for the Federal Defender Program for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where he assisted staff attorneys in providing free legal counsel to indigent defendants accused of federal crimes.

In the academic arena, Joe has served as a research assistant to Jeffrey Berry, the John Richard Skuse, Class of 1941 Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, and to Sara Sobieraj, Associate Professor of Sociology, also at Tufts. In the summer of 2013, Joe attended and presented at a conference on situating Tufts University as a leader in Holocaust and Genocide education and prevention, at the Tufts European Center in Talloires, France. Since then, Joe has remained involved with IMAG(e), the Initiative on Mass Atrocities and Genocide Education at Tufts, the product of the aforementioned conference.

Outside of the professional arena, Joe is currently the business manager of S-Factor, the all-male a cappella group at Tufts focused exclusively on presenting music from the African Diaspora. In addition, Joe has played trumpet and toured with the Tufts Wind Ensemble, and volunteered as a student advocate in the Somerville, Massachusetts office of the national anti-poverty organization LIFT.

Currently, Joe spends most of his time in Somerville, Massachusetts, returning occasionally to his childhood home in Chicago, Illinois.