Marc Smith Sacks

One of America’s most loved entertainment icon who earned the moniker ‘America’s Dad,’ Cosby portrayed wholesome characters during his television career as he starred in popular shows like The Bill Cosby Show, The Fat Albert Show, Kids Perhaps the winningest collegiate football coach in NCAA history, Paterno led the Penn State Nittany Lions to win almost every major tournament in the collegiate league during his tenure from 1996 to 2011: Two national championships and several bowl games – Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Aloha Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Citrus Bowl, Outback Bowl, and the Alamo Bowl. Widely recognized as an eminent sports superstar, Paterno received several accolades and awards, including the Sports illustrated Sportsman of the Year (1986), Amos Alonzo Stagg Coaching Award (2002), Associated Press College Football Coach of the Year Awards (2005), induction into the College Football Hall of Fame (2007), and NCAA Gerald  R. Ford Award (2011). Although Paterno was regarded as a sports legend and iconic leader at Penn State, his cover-up smeared his reputation and ended his career with the shadow of scandal hanging over his head.

It’s no surprise to see the younger generation taking the lead in addressing social issues, including human-caused climate change, because despite having validated scientific data coupled with climate change predictions since the 1960’s (a.k.a. more than 50 years), we’ve failed to change our course collectively. Even now as our scientific community’s early climate change predictions are emerging as our new reality, we have political leaders pretending the catastrophic heat waves, droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes are not related to our collective apathy towards human-caused climate change. In Greta’s projected lifetime, scientists predict deadly heat waves to become annual events for two thirds of the planet, extreme hurricanes to triple current occurrences, whole coastal cities and river towns underwater, utility infrastructures such as electric, water, power and septic under recurrent threat and likely inadequate to support basic human needs, and global migration and number of refugees dwarfing current levels. Greta’s example sparked a global movement called Fridays for Future, a campaign composed of thousands of youth in more than 100 countries who skip school every Friday to fight climate change.

In the wake of the Christchurch mosque shooting, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern faces enormous challenges of healing a nation and bringing to justice the perpetrators of this ignominious crime. After the arrest of the alleged gunman, a lot of immediate issues related to the mass killing have to be settled by Ardern – the revision of the gun control laws, tighter law enforcement intelligence to preempt similar mass shootings, continued security for the Muslim communities and the response to the growing threat from white supremacists. During the aftermath of the shootings, Ardern emphasized that ‘this is not who we are’ and that ‘New Zealand believes in diversity, kindness and compassion.’ The situations when our fundamental values and culture are threatened are crucible moments, critical times for leaders to assert who you are and what you stand for individually and collectively. (2019, March 19) Christchurch attacks show New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern is a leader for our times.

From then on, empowered women organizations in Europe established their own commemoration to safeguard women’s rights, civic duties and assert their role in society. In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly enjoined its member states to celebrate and proclaim International Women’s Day. While we have plenty of present-day women leaders to write about, I thought of writing about powerful women of our not-so-distant past who changed the course of history and made our society better. The past is not the past, and the world of long ago is not so long ago.