The Ohio State University senior Eyako Heh has been named a 2021 James C. Gaither Junior Fellow. Each year, through the James C. Gaither Junior Fellows program, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace offers approximately 12 one-year fellowships to uniquely qualified graduating seniors and individuals who have graduated during the past academic year. They are selected from a pool of nominees nominated by several hundred participating universities and colleges. Each university may only nominate up to three students. James C. Gaither Junior Fellows work as research assistants to Carnegie's senior scholars.
As a member of the university's International Affairs Scholars program, Eyako is a senior majoring in political science with a minor in geography. Heh has maintained a stellar GPA while studying emerging technologies and cybersecurity. Heh participated in OSU's Canadian Parliamentary Internship program, during which time he researched contemporary threats to liberal democracies and online hate speech against immigrants. This experience built upon his passion for civil liberties and political advocacy while simultaneously expanding his international affairs and diplomacy interests. Heh also completed a research internship with OSU's Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, where he researched how surveillance disproportionately impacts Black and Brown populations by being overly pervasive and racialized. Currently, Heh is interning with the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations while completing an undergraduate thesis on the relationship between spatial mobility, race, and state-sanctioned surveillance within the capitalist world economy. Heh has been published in the Dispatch and is a contributing researcher for a City of Columbus Report on Financial Security for Women & Families in Columbus.
As a Gaither Junior Fellow, Heh will work as a research assistant within the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Technology and International Affairs Program. "Research
into emerging technologies," Heh explains, "especially in the wake of mounting state violence against vulnerable communities, harbors the power of rectifying systemic inequities by introducing lawmakers to innovative and informed policy solutions." For this reason, Heh will pursue a PhD in political economy following his year as a Gaither Fellow.
Heh is Ohio State's second Gaither Fellowship recipient; the university's only other winner was Kevin Slaten in 2008. Ohio State University students interested in pursuing the Gaither Fellowship or other national fellowship opportunities should contact the Undergraduate Fellowship Office located within the University Honors & Scholars Center, fellowships.osu.edu. More information on the Gaither Fellowship can be found through the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, https://carnegieendowment.org/about/jr-fellows.