McKenna Baker, president of STWC, pictured speaking to students at a club event on the quad. JAY FRIEDENBERG / COURTESY
Laili Shahrestani, Features Editor
Manhattan University’s Save the World Club (STWC) aims to provide individuals with existential risk education in hopes that it will create not only a more informed society, but also help in keeping humanity safe and alive regardless of what threats emerge. In addition to existential risk education, the club serves as an open environment for students to discuss issues regarding the future of the world, and speak about what changes should be implemented.
Existential risks may range across different levels of threats, with some being more intense than others. Regardless, they are known to be some of these most harsh dangers to the existence of the human race. Roman Einhorn, a junior psychology major, spoke about what defines something to be labeled as an existential risk, and what a few modern-day examples are.
“Existential risk is basically any sort of crisis or danger that affects all of humanity,” Einhorn said. “So it’s not really region specific or politics specific. A good example would be a pandemic, climate change, AI, nuclearization and democratic backsliding. These are things that you see all around the world that are threats to everyone’s immediate quality of life or survival.”
The STWC is a relatively new club on campus, as it was created during the fall 2024 semester with the help of Jay Friedenberg, Ph.D., professor of psychology and the faculty advisor for the club. Friedenberg mentioned how he worked alongside a few of his students to bring the club to life.
“I taught a course about dictators and disinformation in the fall of 2024, and I picked some of my very good students who were interested in it to help collectively create the club,” Friedenberg said.
When asked about what specifically inspired Friedenberg’s passion regarding existential risk education, he referred back to the COVID-19 pandemic and the global tragedy that followed. Friedenberg spoke to The Quadrangle about why this era in particular catalyzed him to feel so passionately about this issue, and the overall importance of protecting human civilization.
“I think it all started during COVID,” Friedenberg said. “I was living in Manhattan, seeing everything going on, and it was just really bad. I mean, hundreds of people were dying a day. I felt like the world was totally unprepared to deal with emergency situations like that and so it sparked my interest … What could be more important than the continued existence of human civilization?”
One of Friedenberg’s students, McKenna Baker, a sophomore psychology major, now serves as the president of the STWC. Baker spoke about her experience in starting the club alongside Friedenberg, and why she feels the club’s mission is important.
“I feel like what drew me to start this whole thing with Professor Friedenberg was just being in his ‘Intro to Psych’ class, which was more based on topics such as existential risk,” Baker said. “I think learning more about the risk, which I never really realized in depth, made me want to push for other people to be educated about it, because the more educated someone is, the more willing they are to make a change at a younger age.”
Friedenberg emphasized Baker’s point regarding the importance of actively working toward making a change and getting involved early on.
“Get involved,” Friedenberg said. “Students should get involved so that they don’t just sit by passively while these horrible things are happening. Get involved in whatever way possible. Community service, politics or any organizations you can get involved with.”
While the SWTC is planning to carry out a number of events in the near future, they have already held a “Cards of Utopia” event out on the quad, where students were able to write down a positive vision of their hopes for a better world on a small card. Coryanne Mulvey, a senior psychology major and the secretary as well as the lead creative director of the STWC, touched on some of the student responses given during the event.
“We had recently just done an event where we collected data from students on campus to see what they thought were the most pressing issues,” Mulvey said. “I know that happiness was a big one. Also climate change, sustainability and inequalities came up, which I think are our big three that we are focusing on.”
In addition to upcoming events, the SWTC has big plans for the spring semester. A new chapter of the SWTC called, “Bridge USA” is in the works, and will operate as a space to both debate and discuss how politics are integrated into existential risk. Jennalyn Canevari, a sophomore political science and criminology double major, as well as the vice president of the STWC, spoke about how Bridge USA will serve as an open and non-judgemental environment for political discourse.
“Bridge USA has a mission to bridge political gaps on college campuses,” Canevari said. “We talk about how politics intertwine into existential risk based on policies that are made throughout Congress that touch on climate change, economics and things like that. Ideally, this would be a space where we host debates and discussions on policies that are happening in our politics, and students of all views can come have honest discussions.”
While the STWC has many aspirations for their club as it is still fairly new, Friedenberg repeatedly emphasized its overall mission of spreading awareness on existential risk threats and coming up with solutions to combat these dangers prevalent in our society today.
“There’s so many things going on now and the signs are not good – I mean just look at the news,” Friedenberg said. “That’s what motivated me to get students involved and to just create a forum where we could get people to be aware of these things. It’s not to scare people, because I get how it can be scary, but it’s to really think about solutions and how to solve these problems.”