As Martin Luther King, Jr. Day approaches, Mack Levy ’27 is emboldened by the work he did as an Undergraduate Research Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) last summer. Levy conducted social science research, wrote briefs, and developed an interactive workshop on gentrification and Black political power. The Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) was founded in 2015 and is a multidisciplinary center within the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF).

“This fellowship helped me couple my love for law and my passion for equity to continue to pursue a career fighting for racial justice,” says Levy, a Political Science major. “It helped me understand the importance of having a liberal arts education. I found that a multi-faceted background is paramount to studying the construction of identity. Understanding intersectionality between racial construction, ethnicity, gender, religion, and government is necessary to work towards social and racial justice. CC’s liberal arts education enables students to explore all of these topics and how they are interrelated.”

Levy lived in an apartment in Brooklyn for eight weeks, where he commuted to the Financial District to work at the LDF headquarters.

“The fellowship was demanding and intense, but extremely rewarding,” says Levy, who generally worked with three other summer Research Fellows: undergraduate students from Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Howard University. Levy was mentored by Senior Research Manager Dr. Kesha Moore.

“One of my biggest takeaways from the internship is how the Trump Administration’s restriction on information and budget cuts are affecting the ability to do social science research,” Levy says. “I needed to access previously available EPA GIS mapping software, but the administration had removed it. I had to find demographic statistics on Queer youth in America, yet access to data on questions about transgender identity, sexuality, and sexual identity was restricted.”

Levy spent the summer primarily working on four projects. Along with the other three summer Research Fellows, Levy researched, wrote, and produced an episode of LDF’s “Justice Above All” podcast on Black farmers and rural Black land ownership in the U.S.

“I learned about the culture and history of Black agrarianism and how the USDA is constructed, with power concentrated in local county offices, in a way that maintains prejudice against Black farmers,” Levy says. Levy helped to author a brief on the ways anti-truth policies harm Black LGBTQ+ students, which he then adapted into a handout.

Levy also worked with a team of researchers to develop a comprehensive, interactive workshop on gentrification and Black political power for grassroots community organizers. Throughout the summer, Levy wrote and researched settlement reports for the National Police Funding Database.

“The intensity and depth of CC’s Block Plan prepared me for the structure of work at LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute,” Levy says. “Hours of working continuously on the same projects, such as the podcast or gentrification and Black political power workshop, was similar to the student experience on the Block Plan. Working in-depth with my peers to examine social construction and social science at CC helped me do the same at LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute.”

Levy’s passion for social science research and law was first sparked when he took “Constitutional Law” and “Street Law” at his high school, Hanover High School, in Hanover, New Hampshire. He then worked as a teacher’s assistant for those two classes during the following year, where he ended up being responsible for teaching the judicial history of affirmative action.

Through his educational work in New Hampshire, Levy met Chief Justice Gordon J. MacDonald of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and got to spend Summer 2023 interning with him. This internship helped to establish a connection between the New Hampshire Supreme Court and Hanover High School, and now students from Hanover High School intern at the NHSC every summer.

“I am grateful for the CC Career Center staff for connecting me with—and promoting—this valuable opportunity,” Levy says.

Levy is not yet sure of his future career goals, but he is confident that the lessons he learned last summer will stick with him. “Whether I continue to do research, go to law school, or work in the outdoors, I will always question how race influences social stratification and strive towards a shared ideal of social justice,” Levy says. “I aim to couple my love for research and people to work in a social organization within the next few years.”