Pashion Israel
Boiling Springs native Pashion Israel is studying to make the world a better place.
A graduate of Boiling Springs High School, Israel has always been interested in the humanities and social sciences. She earned her bachelor’s degree in history and politics with a minor in American Sign Language from Converse University, where she made connections that led her to the Clinton School of Public Service with the University of Arkansas. Israel began studying at the Clinton School this past fall, where she plans to earn her master’s.
One of the biggest things that drew her to the Clinton School was the wide range of field service opportunities offered to students. The school strongly believes in the power of hands-on learning, creating unique experiences for Israel and her cohort to engage in.
Currently, Israel is working with the University of Arkansas system office to do a needs assessment of the school’s emergency preparedness and emergency operations programs. Then, later this summer, she will be heading to southern Thailand for eight weeks with an organization called Little Wonders to work with children under the age of six in rural areas.
This past March, Israel was nominated by her professors to participate in the NASPAA Student Simulation Competiton. Five students from the Clinton School were chosen and randomly assigned to work with students from other schools to collaboratively solve a high-stakes crisis management scenario.
Israel and one other student from her cohort were teamed up with students from Southern Utah University, the University of New Mexico, and Rutgers. The students were tasked with creating a Community Wildfire Protection Plan for the fictional town of Westmount.
Each student was assigned a different role within the town, which came with its own set of priorities. The students had to not only create an effective plan, but to navigate the competing interests of their roles.
“It was stressful because I was originally supposed to be a water manager, and then I got there the day of the competition and we had an uneven number of people,” Israel shared. “I was reassigned to a completely different role on a completely different team, and ended up working as the mayor. I only had about five minutes to read all of the materials and learn about the specific responsibilities of my role.”
Despite the adversities thrown her way, Israel rose to the challenge and helped her team win the competition.
“I have a little experience working in the nonprofit sector, but I had no experience in anything related to wildfire mitigation,” she said. “It was a really interesting experience because we all had very specific priorities that did not align, which is very much how it is in real life. So it was really helpful to learn how to navigate that in a very short time frame.”
After returning from Thailand this summer, Israel will spend the remaining year of her degree working on her capstone project. She plans to write a research paper that explores a cross-regional comparative analysis on the definition of citizenship for women in two different regions of the world. Her goal is to analyze constitutions, inheritance law, and citizenship law to see how citizenship is fully defined, and then determine whether or not women fit into these definitions of citizenship.
It’s work she intends to continue moving forward, as she plans to earn her PhD following the completion of her master’s degree. Israel is interested in international relations and comparative politics, and wants to study issues of citizenship around the world.
Long-term, she hopes to stay in research and academia, focusing her efforts on statelessness, or when a person does not have citizenship to any country.
“It’s looking at what’s going on in a country that may lead to a person not having citizenship, and how can the world at large try and make sure that doesn’t happen?” explained Israel. “Obviously, a lot of things can go wrong if you aren’t a citizen. It makes it really hard to get an education or get a job or leave the country you’re staying in, because you have no proof that you’re a citizen of any country at all. So I want to go and talk to some of these people that are experiencing statelessness and explore some of the ways that countries and the international world can help reduce the number of people going through that.”
Her passion for her work shines through, and it’s exciting to see the difference that Israel hopes to make in the world around her — from Boiling Springs to far beyond.
