The University Libraries has a rich tradition of hosting interdisciplinary symposia. In the past, faculty members and students from across the disciplines have come together at the Libraries to explore topics such as water, open education, academic publishing, coffee, ethnography, and climate science. On Thursday, November 7, 2019, the University Libraries will continue this tradition by hosting a symposium on the topic of immigration.
The event will be held in the Bradley Reading Room in Strozier Library and is sponsored by the FSU Civil Rights Institute as well as the College of Social Sciences & Public Policy. Coffee, pastries, and lunch will be provided. Everyone is welcome to attend.
Throughout the day, different presenters will look at the topic of immigration from the perspective of their particular disciplines. The schedule has been structured to allow for numerous presentations and perspectives, as well as dialog and conversation. A primary objective of the symposium is to model critical thinking and civil discourse in a positive environment.
Terry Coonan, director of the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights, and Darby Scott, director of the FSU Immigration Law Project, will kick off the day by talking about current issues, recent policy changes, and legal battles. They will discuss topics like diminishing protections for refugees and asylum-seekers, changes to DACA, birthright citizenship, and family separation. Suanne Sinke, Professor of History, will examine the role of family in three different groups in three different time periods of U.S. immigration. Justin Vos, also from History, will look specifically at how letters are used to encounter the first-hand perspective of immigrants, and Professor of English, Virgil Suarez, will share how his own poetry is witness and record to his family’s immigrant experience. From an anthropological perspective, Vincent Joos (Modern Languages) will discuss the brutal repression of migrants in northern France and the persistence of those migrants to rebuild their lives in the U.K. Javier Ramos, from Criminology, will then examine the link between immigration and recidivism. Ramos’ research considers the impact of legal status and nationality on the tendency to reoffend. The next two presenters, Miguel Hernandez, the co-interim director of the Center for Leadership & Social Change, and Luciana Hornung, Associate General Counsel, will both look at the impact of immigation policies on our own FSU community. Hernandez will talk about the efforts FSU has taken over the past two decades to support students that are unauthorized residents, and Hornung will discuss hot topics in employment-based immigration cases, immigrant visas, and the role of in-house counsel. Finally, Matt Hauer, a sociologist and demographer, will talk about his research on forced migration due to sea-level rise and how that migration could reshape the U.S. population distribution.
We hope that you will be able to join us for an day of collaboration and engagement around this very important topic. A detailed schedule of the day can be found at this site: https://www.lib.fsu.edu/immigration