Greg Johnson

There are currently hundreds of thousands of black men taking classes at colleges and universities across the country. These aspiring intellectuals come from big cities, small towns, urban areas and those more rural, and from nearly every socio-economic status imaginable. Each brings his own unique story.

Picture a typical American family sitting down for Sunday dinner at a nice restaurant. The father in this scenario, a physically fit man in his early 40s, orders the roasted lamb, his wife has the coddled duck and their three children split a large tray of tiger shrimp.

Photo credit: Peter Tobia Amy Smith, left, and Hannah Weiss chat with Clarence Briscoe during a recent dinner at the Penn Hillel soup kitchen.

Many departments and offices spread the holiday cheer this time of year by exchanging Pollyanna or Secret Santa gifts among co-workers. But why not give a gift of charity instead?

Penn was by no means as radical as the University of California at Berkeley, or Columbia University, in the turbulent and tumultuous 1960s, but the University did see its share of campus uprisings and sit-ins to protest civil rights violations, the lack of cultural studies, assassinations and the Vietnam War.

HOPE SPRINGS: Florida-native and Penn sophmore Brittany Young, 19, established A Spring of Hope, a non-profit organization that builds wells in rural African communities, in 2005 after visiting Limpopo, South Africa, on vacation with her mother.

The United States, although widely recognized as a bastion of freedom and democracy, does not get an automatic “A” on its human rights report card.

 Photo credit: Peter Tobia

Photo credit: Mike Swiszcz With spectacular views of the Law School Courtyard, Golkin Hall is the fourth and final piece of Penn Law’s four-building site, and the last phase in a decade-long transformation of the Law School campus.