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Senior Wins Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics

Magogodi Makhene, a senior, has won the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics, a national writing competition sponsored by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in New York City. Wiesel presented the award to Makhene on September 20 at the Foundation’s annual awards ceremony in Manhattan.

Her essay, entitled “The Ethics of South African Identity,” is about growing up in South Africa and the sacrifices that people there had to make in order to become what Nelson Mandela has called “the rainbow nation.”

Makhene, an international business major, is 25 and a native of Johannesburg, South Africa. She came to America in 1999 as a foreign exchange student. After graduating from high school in California, she attended college in Minnesota for a year but craved “a more diverse environment and proximity to the culture that a city offers.” She moved to Philadelphia, worked full time for several years and then enrolled at Neumann.  

The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics is an annual essay competition designed to challenge college students to analyze the urgent ethical issues confronting them in today's complex world. Students are encouraged to write thought-provoking personal essays that raise questions, single out issues and provide rational arguments for ethical action. All submissions to the essay contest are judged anonymously by a jury that includes Elie Wiesel. The second- and third-place winners this year are from the University of Texas and Boston College.

For his literary and human rights activities, Wiesel has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award. In 1986, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Soon afterward, he and his wife established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization created to fight indifference, intolerance and injustice.

9/28/07