fall leaves outside campus
Category: Fall 2020, Georgetown Magazine

Title:From the Editor—Fall 2020

Author: Jeffrey Donahoe
Date Published: November 17, 2020

We were first thinking about framing the content for this issue of Georgetown Magazine around the global health emergency that continues to rock health, economic, and social structures worldwide. By the time we were at work, our country was again facing a painful reckoning on racial injustice. Together these overarching narratives speak to a time of transformation—globally, nationally, and personally. The cover headline, Finding Our Way, tries to express that we are all on a journey.

The alumni who shared their experiences in the “Personal Reflections” feature spoke about some of the ways their personal lives, work, and perspectives changed this year. I talked with many of them, and every phone interview was a privilege. I wish I could have included more from our conversations, but magazine space can be restrictive. I encourage you to follow the link in the “Campus Heroes” photo feature to our online magazine site to read more of the thoughtful stories that some of Georgetown’s essential campus workers shared. These members of the George- town family represent a tiny fraction of those working to keep campus running smoothly, even during a pandemic.

Speaking of the online site, like almost all of our peers, Georgetown Magazine is online-only for this issue as a budget measure, given the financial realities facing higher education. I know that for many of you, nothing matches the experience of a print magazine. We are committed to returning to print as soon as we are able. In the meantime, we’ll keep our digital presence fresh, so make sure you have magazine.georgetown.edu in your bookmarks. The online format makes it easy to share articles with friends and family. Digital magazines sometimes have the unfair reputation as being “less than” print, but the magazine team, whose names I encourage you to note in the right column on this page, have tended to every word and image as you would expect, and we’ve set up this PDF to simulate as much as possible your experience of reading the magazine in print.

In closing, I want to highlight what I was told by the pandemic faculty experts interviewed for “Weathering the Storm”—just a few of the many Georgetown faculty and staff tasked with solving the biomedical and social issues of the pandemic. In addition to talking about the heavy lift facing all of us, they urge us to be kind and patient with ourselves and those around us, to check in with our families and neighbors, to think about a better future, and to stay hopeful. Good advice as we close a year like no other.

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