Jillian Johnson: Heading West to Teach for America

Jillian Johnson didn't wait long to act on her convictions.

At age 9, the Richmond, Va., native became distressed when her neighbors tried to eradicate a gypsy moth caterpillar infestation by putting up nets around their trees.

"I was really upset by this because I liked the caterpillars a lot," the Duke senior recalled. "I liked to play with them and have them crawl around on my arms.

"And everyone was killing them. I felt really bad, so I distributed flyers to my neighbors telling them 'Don't kill the caterpillars,' and went around and tried to take down the nets off the trees."

Her activist ways continue today. Since arriving at Duke, the 21-year-old public policy major has been an active participant in Students Against Sweatshops; the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community; and the Student Peace Action Network. This year, she was one of the leaders of an anti-war group that organized student walkouts and other forms of protest against the war in Iraq. She also was part of an unsuccessful effort to get Duke to divest from companies that have military contracts with Israel.

"We weren't expecting any schools, really, to divest from Israel in the first two or three years. I mean, South African divestment took 10 years, so this is a long-term effort."

Johnson said she inherited her social conscience from her mother Robin, a child-protection worker. "It was passed on to me that if I saw injustice in the world that I could do something about it, and I should do something about it. It was my responsibility to do something about it."

Visiting public policy professor Steve Schewel said Johnson, a student in Schewel's "Leadership, Policy and Change" seminar, "was fearless in stating and supporting her own opinions, but she also respected the opinions of others and listened to them in the same relentless way she approaches everything. I still remember the final discussion in that class when she and a senior in naval ROTC, also an excellent student and thinker, talked about the mutual respect they shared despite their many differences over the course of the semester."

Schewel said he looked forward each week to reading what Johnson had written in her journal, one of the seminar's requirements. "The journal blended critical commentary on the texts we read with Jillian's wide-ranging reflections on our nation's current political situation, the politics of life at Duke and her own personal commitment to social change. She possesses a daunting work ethic and a big, restless brain that is remarkably free of conventional constraints."

When choosing a school, Johnson said she considered Wesleyan University in Connecticut, "which has this reputation for being very socially conscious and socially active. But I figured if I went to Wesleyan, I'd spend four years learning how to talk with people who already thought like me."

At Duke, Johnson feels she has had many opportunities - both in the classroom and through student groups - to learn about social activism and to make an impact.

While she wishes that more of her classmates were socially involved, Johnson said she sees a positive trend beginning to emerge. "Starting last year, I've noticed a shift in the kind of people that are entering Duke. I feel like there's a push toward more intellectualism, and away from the party culture scene. And I think that's been reflected in the number of new students that we've gotten involved in different organizations.

"A lot of my friends who are in our antiwar group and our divestment group are on scholarships. They are A.B. Dukes, or they're University Scholars, or Robertsons, so I feel like Duke is trying to recruit people with more of an intellectual focus in their way of looking at the world."

After graduation, Johnson will be headed to New Mexico to teach on a Navajo reservation for two years, as part of the Teach for America program. "I think education is one of the places in society where inequality is most reproduced. So I wanted to get involved kind of on the ground level with trying to give kids a better education, so they're better able to succeed in the world."

After teaching, Johnson said she may find work with a labor or human rights organization.

Schewel said he has no doubts that Johnson will succeed in her future endeavors.

"Jillian, at the tender age of 21, already lives the life of the activist. She figures out what she believes in and then she goes after it fearlessly.

"One day not long ago, I saw a bunch of forms lying under white sheets at the West Campus bus stop. One student was handing out anti-war literature, and it was clear to me after some observation that the shapeless forms represented the bodies of Iraqi dead. Not long afterwards, I ran into Jillian and she told me she had been one of the still forms under the sheets.

"That's Jillian for you. She doesn't have to have the most glamorous job. In fact, she'll do all the hard, anonymous work of the organizer and activist."