“If you could teach a course on anything, what would you teach?”
This fall semester, Pulitzer Prize winner Molly O’Toole ‘09 is teaching the American Studies seminar American Dream?: Journalism, Politics, and Identity in U.S. Immigration Policy.
As a Distinguished Visiting Journalist Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences and an immigration and security reporter with the Los Angeles Times, she returns to her alma mater to share her experiences and knowledge with budding journalists.
During the course, O’Toole meets with students interested in media and journalism to discuss the policy and political impacts of journalistic coverage of U.S. based immigration events. She felt particularly compelled to teach this course due to the increased media focus on and divisiveness of immigration in the past few years.
By incorporating a journalistic lens to immigration policy, O’Toole hopes to bridge the gap between the classroom and real world, an element she thinks is often overlooked in academia.
Nonetheless, she attributes her formative experiences in academia, more specifically at Cornell, for where she is today.
“It’s [Cornell Daily Sun] importantly independent of the university, which is a valuable experience to have when you’re trying to learn how to do journalism. That really shaped me. That was my primary introduction but also a crash course, boot camp education on how to be a newspaper journalist,” O’Toole reflects.
Her work with writing in the classroom and in her extracurriculars allowed her to solidify her interest in journalism. However, her specific journalistic interest—foreign policy—was shaped by government, international relations, and American Studies courses, in addition to study abroad in London.
Current Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Daily Sun and student of O’Toole’s, Kathryn Stamm, points out that she will use her experiences working for the Sun and learning from O’Toole when moderating a discussion with the guest lecturer on Nov. 4.
“I will draw on my experiences as a working journalist for that discussion because it is a career based discussion but I’m also hoping to surface some of the wisdom and tips and things that Molly has shared with us in class because it is a journalism class.”
Natalie Breitkopf ‘22, who hopes to enter the journalistic field of television, entertainment, or public service, took O’Toole’s class with an ensuing passion for immigration and points out how advice from various guest speakers brought in by O’Toole has bolstered her commitment to journalism.
“I’ve taken previous classes about immigration in the United States. I’ve also, in the last year, done a documentary on a DACA faculty member on campus, as well as interviewed the Dean of Students and various other students with DACA status across the Ivy League.”
“[Molly] brings in a lot of guest speakers from really well known publications and mediums. It’s been really great to hear their experiences, their advice. It has definitely motivated me to pursue a career in that field,” Breitkopf mentions.
Breitkopf praises O’Toole for her accomplishments and looks forward to having conversations with her and fellow students about how immigration relates to the broader United States and how it relates to our community.
By the end of the course, O’Toole hopes that students realize the importance of media literacy and accessibility of journalism.
“I am really hoping to give them the tools to be critical media consumers because I think that’s just good for democracy and good for society. And it’s increasingly difficult with the proliferation of social media platforms,” O’Toole emphasizes.
She adds, “I really want them to be comfortable with their own journalism. Journalism can be incredibly accessible as long as you responsibly and ethically conduct journalism and adhere to the same standards that ensure you’re doing no harm but also motivated by public service.”
O’Toole hopes that her status as a quasi-recent Cornell undergraduate with extensive journalistic experience motivates students to find a path for them in the field.
