Four Swarthmore sophomores, the newest recipients of the Eugene M. Lang Opportunity Scholarship (LOS), will embark on an array of projects around the world, collaborating with partners to effect change.

A signature program of the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility, LOS supports innovative efforts by students working on issues of social concern in deep consultation with community members.

“We are thrilled to welcome the LOS Class of 2028 and to join them in creating lasting social impact," says Jennifer Magee, director of program development, implementation & assessment at the Lang Center, who advises the scholars. 

"As Lang Scholars, they will identify and address pressing societal problems with their community partners. I am honored and humbled to support these inspiring students in their important work."

Below, the students shed light on their upcoming projects as well as the opportunity presented to them as Lang Opportunity Scholars.

Keanu Arpels-Josiah ’28 (New York, N.Y.)

Since 2022, Arpels-Josiah has helped lead the youth climate justice movement in New York City and throughout the United States. This project advances that work by considering the cross-issue fight for a livable future and addressing the interconnected crises of fossil fuel extractivism, militarism, subsidization of genocide, and climate that are shaping the future of their generation in Arpels-Josiah's home of New York City, in Pennsylvania, and across the world. His project will explore how place-based local work can build cultures of solidarity and cross-issue campaigns, ultimately investigating new movement identities and translocal strategies for youth movement spaces.

“For me, it’s an honor to be invited to the upcoming cohort of the Lang Opportunity Scholar Program because, in an academic environment too often dominated by extractive information-gathering processes and too often funding the very fossil fuel and militaristic industries destroying our future, the Lang Opportunity Scholarship offers a critical venue for supporting the actual community-rooted engaged scholarship work that is vital to an ethical education and to what our role as students and learners writ large should be. I hope that through the project, not only am I able to explore the very questions that bring together youth movements for climate justice in local communities and how they relate to a broader global moment of continued fossil fuel expansion, militarism, climate crisis, and intersecting crises, but also, rooted in this analysis, I’m able to provide concrete support in building out these very movements.”

Photo credit: Michelle Gustafson

Annie Liu ’28 (Ellicott City, Md.)

In Southeastern Pennsylvania, immigrant communities face a civil legal system that too often operates under a “one-size-fits-all” model. This leaves domestic violence survivors vulnerable to cultural misunderstandings that impact whether their stories are believed in court. Liu's project, Cultural Liaisons for Legal Advocacy, pilots a cultural liaison advisory board that connects community liaisons, immigrant-serving organizations, and legal aid providers. Together, they aim to turn community insights into survivor-informed training and a replicable toolkit that strengthens attorney-client communication, improves courtroom advocacy, and builds sustainable infrastructure for culturally responsive legal practice, ultimately bridging cultures to build safer homes for immigrant survivors across Pennsylvania.

“Being a Lang Opportunity Scholar means having the space, guidance, and responsibility to see where people are falling through the cracks of our systems and to help build lasting, community-rooted infrastructure so those systems hold people up instead of letting them slip through. Through my project, I hope to strengthen survivor engagement and enhance courtroom advocacy in the short term, while laying the foundation to institutionalize cultural liaison roles within Pennsylvania’s courts and advance a justice system that not only grants immigrant survivors access, but ensures they are truly understood and protected.”

Diane Arias Tejeda ’28 (Hazleton, Pa.)

Tejada's intended project aims to reinforce existing food security initiatives in the neighboring Chester area by addressing food preparation and nutrition education. By providing cooking classes that teach culturally relevant dishes using locally available distributed food items, this project aims to increase the nutrition and resource education of young teens in Chester.

“Being a Lang Opportunity Scholar allows me to address a social issue that I have personally experienced in the past. I’m grateful for this opportunity, because it puts me in a position with agency to influence the future outcomes of others from similar backgrounds. I hope that through the program’s guidance and support, I am able to return a sense of agency to others in similar circumstances, and additionally help them build lifelong skills, improve their health, and create happy memories associated with food and the community that feeds and provides for them.”

Bijan Taheri ’28 (Agoura Hills, Calif.)

Taheri's project focuses on building the essential infrastructure for Youth for Innocence, a nonprofit that empowers youth to help overturn wrongful convictions through non-lawyer advocacy. While some innocence clinics accept undergraduate volunteers, the potential of high school and undergraduate students to prepare wrongful conviction cases and take the first steps toward exoneration is often overlooked. By overhauling the current training and establishing partnerships with members of the innocence community, youth volunteers will be equipped with the knowledge and connections to make a direct impact in freeing the innocent around the world and in their own communities.

“For me, being a Lang Opportunity Scholar means I'll have an unparalleled opportunity to be a part of something much larger than myself, enabling others to join in the work I care so deeply about and changing the lives of others through collective action. Through my project, I hope to leave behind a framework that becomes an adaptable foundation for thousands of non-lawyer advocates to free hundreds of innocent individuals in the U.S. and around the globe.”