“When schools close for summer, many students will seek summer employment. Some will need the earnings to continue their education or to help out at home.” President Nixon, Memorandum About the Federal Summer Employment Program for Youth, March 30, 1971
In today’s job market and sluggish economy many students need both, money for their education and to support themselves while out of school. But summer employment has another purpose; it helps build a graduate’s resume, cultivates their skills and gives them experience as they journey into the workforce.
This summer, the Richard Nixon Foundation has had the pleasure of working with a talented group of interns. These exceptional young college students (and one high school student), with diverse backgrounds and interests, each focused on a unique aspect of the Nixon administration.
Each intern took on the hard work of identifying and annotating key documents in their given subject, collected by sifting through hundreds of boxes, containing thousands of pages of memorandum, telegrams, speech drafts, and all types of correspondence. Their work will be the basis of future study guides. Soon scholars will be able to navigate key documents from the Nixon Administration online that will in turn provide a new Nixon resource to scholars across the nation.
Research interns covered a wide variety of topics over the summer, on both President Nixon’s domestic and foreign policy.
Sean Stroh, a history major and journalism minor going into his third year at Chapman University, examined President Nixon’s role in the peaceful desegregation of Southern schools. For Sean, the most eye opening part of the internship “was learning about how nearly all of the southern schools had remained segregated,15 years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Most people know about the famous Brown v. Board ruling, but not many are aware of how the issue of segregated schools remained a problem for the next 15 years.
Karen Neis, a second year Medieval Studies major at Notre Dame focused on President Nixon’s trip to China. The President’s personal notes, and especially previously confidential materials were the documents that Karen found most interesting.
“I especially like finding documents that used to be confidential and documents with the President’s actual handwriting, though it is impossible to read.”
Kenneth Schneider researched the events and relationships that led up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War—an event that was covered in great detail earlier this year in a symposium with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Karen Liu, who is also going into her third year at Chapman, furthered research on the role of women in the Nixon administration and the positive effect Title IX. Free to choose her own topic, Karen directed her research on what she considered an often “underrated” but important topic—women’s history. Garret Williams, going into his senior year in high school, took on the complex and delicate task of researching how the US-Taiwan relationship influenced the emerging dynamic between the US and China.
Interesting historical notes and documents on each interns topic were highlighted on The New Nixon blog, alongside writings from Brandon Mancilla, marketing intern, and Marshall Garvey, contributing writer.
The Richard Nixon Foundation will continue to grow the research intern program and uphold the standard of great work that was set this summer. For more information about interning with the Richard Nixon Foundation over the school year, send a cover letter and resume to Ian Delzer, at [email protected].