Woman of the world
Jordana Mosten receives Williams Prize in Social Justice

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff

Jordana Mosten’s heart will be at Rice University for commencement, but the rest of her will be in Africa, doing the very kind of thing the university will honor her for.

Mosten ’06 is the second recipient of the Linda Faye Williams Prize in Social Justice, which is given annually to a senior or recent graduate (within five years) who enables understanding across boundaries of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality, sexual orientation and ideology. The prize comes with a $1,000 stipend.

	JORDANA MOSTEN

Mosten, a Los Angeles native, is in Namibia as part of Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. She has been working for the past six weeks as part of a team to improve citizens’ access to water. ”In Namibia, the poorest people live in informal settlements that lack basic services such as running water, clean toilets and refuse removal,” she said in a phone interview this week. “Our team is trying to help people who do not have a water tap in their homes and must buy their water under a prepay system. They buy a card; then they have to walk to the water point to get water and then have to cart a 20-liter container back to their homes.

“If they don’t have enough money to recharge the card or to pay for water, they have to go without it. We’ve been doing fieldwork around the country, interviewing people and taking affidavits about the situation, with the goal of getting the government to improve access to water. It might end up in litigation, and we’re starting to prepare a case. But it also might end up being an advocacy effort,” said the Stanford law student.

“Jordana has been a passionate advocate for social justice since her days at Rice and has worked tirelessly for global political and social reforms,” said Robin Forman, Rice’s dean of undergraduates. “Seamlessly integrating her academic and professional work with her passion, she has a list of contributions and accomplishments that is astounding for one so young. Jordana is on her way to becoming a true leader among civil-rights advocates.”

The Williams award “describes perfectly what she wants to do and what she’s been doing for the past couple of years,” said Steven Lewis, professor in the practice of humanities and a research fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

Lewis, who nominated Mosten for the award, recalled her participation in the Baker Institute’s Jesse Jones Leadership Center Summer in D.C. Policy Research Internship Program. She worked in the legislative relations office of the American Civil Liberties Union, building upon her efforts to establish the ACLU chapter at Rice.

“She’s very gutsy. Working at the ACLU in D.C. energized her to go out and explore the world,” said Lewis, noting Mosten’s travels have taken her to Japan, where she taught English for a year, and on a solo journey via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Other projects have sent her to South Dakota, Cuba, Honduras and the Czech Republic. “She’s done an enormous amount of traveling for such a young person.”

“It means so much to me to know that even though I am no longer a student at Rice, my professors continue to support my career,” said Mosten, who will use the prize to pay expenses while practicing immigration and national security law at the ACLU of Southern California this summer.

“My four years at Rice were amazing,” she said. “Not only did I have wonderful professors and friends, but I was lucky to have had the generous support of the university, which allowed me to pursue my passions. I am amazed and gratified that Rice’s commitment to its students extends beyond graduation.”

Williams, a 1970 graduate who died in 2006, was one of Rice’s first black undergraduate students to earn a bachelor’s degree after Rice abandoned a charter provision that limited enrollment to white students. She was a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland and an expert on race and gender politics.

The first Williams award winner was Megan Francis, who recently earned a doctorate at Princeton and has been teaching political science as a postdoc at the University of Chicago.