Student nations or simply nations (Latin: natio meaning being born) are regional corporations of students at a university. Once widespread across Europe in medieval times, they are now largely restricted to the ancient universities of Sweden and Finland. The students, who were all born within the same region, usually spoke the same language, and expected to be ruled by their own familiar law. The most similar comparison in the Anglo-world to the nation system is in the collegiate system of older British universities or fraternities at American universities; however, both of these comparisons are imperfect.

In the University of Paris there were the French, Normans, Picards, and the English, and later the Alemannian nation. Jean Gerson was twice elected procurator for the French natio (i.e. the French-born students at the University) in 1383 and 1384, while studying theology at Paris. Also at Paris, Germanic speakers were grouped into a single nation.

There were also smaller subdivisions, even cities, like Natio Misnensium for students from Meissen at the University of Leipzig, established in 1409, where other nationes were those of the Saxonum, Bavarorum, and Polonorum.[7]

A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government (for example the inhabitants of a sovereign state) irrespective of their ethnic make-up. In international relations, nation can refer to a country or sovereign state. The word nation can more specifically refer to people of North American Indians, such as the Cherokee Nation that prefer this term over the contested term tribe.

According to Joseph Stalin writing in 1913 in Marxism and the National Question: "a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people;" "a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people;" "a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation;" "a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation;" "A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture." According to Stalin, this would exclude Jews as they have no common territory.

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is the wife of the 44th and incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, and is the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama attended Princeton University and Harvard Law School before returning to Chicago and to work at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her future husband. Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, and for the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Throughout 2007 and 2008, she helped campaign for her husband's presidential bid and delivered a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She is the mother of two daughters, Malia and Sasha, and is the sister of Craig Robinson, men's basketball coach at Oregon State University. As the wife of a Senator, and later the First Lady, she has become a fashion icon and role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition and healthy eating.