How a Facing History Class Influenced a Career Choice

Can one class in high school influence someone's career path? In Jemma McPherson's life, this seems to be the case. She was profoundly influenced by a theology class she took her junior year at Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco.

In the class, teacher Clare Parker combined theology, history and current events-all infused with Facing History's themes and approach.

"She (Clare) would make a point that if you have a theological argument against genocide or torture, then you have an obligation to learn about it, because you have no grounding in having a moral objection to it if you don't understand the historical background. I find history to be a really good inroad to understanding our present," Jemma said.

One book that has had a major impact on Jemma is A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power. It's why she now works at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. (Power was the founding executive director.) The book, which won a Pulitzer Prize, looks at American foreign policy during the 20th century and its implications for today.

"That book had a huge impact on what I chose to do in college and the places I chose to work in college. A big part of the reason why I was interested in the book in the first place was the way I learned to think about the world in my theology class and its focus on Facing History. It is a very Facing History type of book...the idea of looking back at American policy in the 20th century. It's pragmatic in the sense that it says history can be useful if looked at in an analytical fashion," Jemma recalled.

Before she worked at the Carr Center Jemma majored in history at Wellesley. She plans to attend law school next fall. Jemma says she keeps running into other Facing History alumni who are trying to make a difference in their chosen careers.

"I look at my friends who also had Facing History within their high school experiences and a lot of us are doing similar things-working for legal aid organizations, trying to go to law school and be human rights lawyers, working at a human rights organization. They have a sense of social justice and also a pretty good grounding in what I call the facts . . . like the facts of human rights. . . .," she said.