Business success enables Marvin Lender to support the causes that matter to him most. And few matter more than social justice — the focus of a new Syracuse University center bearing the Lender name.

Maxwell always served undergraduate social science students. But, for this fall’s incoming class, admission to Maxwell is direct and the “Maxwell freshman” is official.

Melanie Hicken and her CNN reporting partner detail a massive, decades-long scam that cost many their life savings. It’s all described in the reporters’ new book.

New courses and a new major meet University-wide student interest in the challenges of energy, environment, and sustainability.

An ambitious project assessing courts across the globe and their approaches to protected speech also provides opportunities for student research.

That will be just one question considered when a new Syracuse University institute, housed at Maxwell, addresses the policy issues and social impacts associated with drones, self-driving cars, and other autonomous systems.

The inaugural Policy Camp introduced undergraduate students of color to career options in policy — and to the impact bolstered racial and cultural diversity can have across the public sector.

As Syracuse University’s first Tillman Scholar and a PA student focused on national security studies, Ryan Gross brings real life to the classroom.

Sound scholarship helps us understand what sometimes seems unknowable: North Africa and the Middle East.

This summer, Maxwell convened Minnowbrook at 50, an anniversary conference on the same hallowed ground. For most who attended, the times seemed no less volatile, and deciding how public administrators and scholars meet an era’s challenges proved anything but simple.

Michael Boulware Moore heads efforts to build a new museum on slave-trade hallowed ground in Charleston.

These are interesting times for journalists in America. We reached out to nine of them, all with degrees from Maxwell. With their public affairs education, they understand as well as any journalists what the vigor of the press means to us all.

“Our life expectancy is increasingly being shaped by where we live in the U.S.,” says Jennifer Karas Montez, Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar of Aging Studies at Maxwell. It’s tempting to blame lifestyle-related behaviors, but “lifestyle behaviors are not root causes. They are symptoms of the environment and the social and economic deprivation that many parts of the country endure, thanks to decades of policy decisions.”

David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School, and Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, discuss the relationship between their programs and trends in the nation that suggest a public affairs approach to journalism is as important as ever.

Alumna Kerstin Vignard, ’96 MAIR, is the Deputy Director at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). She leads work on emerging security issues, helping shape policy and regulation of evolving weapon systems.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) program's reputation and Washington location provide Maxwell students and faculty regular access to a range of leaders and practitioners—to an extent not feasible in Syracuse,” says University Professor and Phanstiel Chair Sean O’Keefe ’78 M.P.A., who is charged with developing opportunities to further nurture Maxwell/CSIS collaboration.

Thanks to the generosity of one “citizen of the world,” dozens of budding scholars have chased far-flung intellectual goals.