Borders, Bans, Walls, and Welcomes: U.S. Immigration Today
The Provost’s Series on Wicked Problems

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP beginning Thursday, August 10, at 9 a.m.

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP
USC Alumni: RSVP
General Public: RSVP

DESCRIPTION: 
As millions of people are displaced by violence and rising sea levels, or feel compelled to leave home in search of jobs or safety somewhere else, an increasingly globalized world must reckon with the values and the challenges of national borders. Do we build bridges or walls? Enact bans or offer welcomes? Join Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and author of There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration; Leilani Chan, founding artistic director of TeAda Productions and co-creator of the play Refugee Nation; USC professor Manuel Pastor, director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration; and USC professor Roberto Suro, author of Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue, for a provocative conversation about immigration—one of the most pressing and divisive issues of our time.

The event is presented as part of the Provost’s Series on Wicked Problems, which brings together special guests and USC faculty to discuss the most intractable, multifaceted problems of our time. The series was established by Provost Michael Quick in 2016 out of a belief that universities must take on “wicked problems” through interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and the education of a new generation of leaders and innovators who just might create the solutions the world needs.

About the Participants:

Leilani Chan is an award-winning performance artist, actor, playwright, director, cultural worker, and founding artistic director of TeAda Productions, which develops and presents cross-disciplinary performances focused on the experiences of communities of color. She is the co-creator of Refugee Nation, the first nationally touring play about Laotian refugees in the U.S. She received a National Performance Network Creation Fund for Global Taxi Driver, a transnational community-based performance exploring immigration and mobility in the 21st century. Her newest projects are Masters of the Current, which focuses on the Micronesian community in Hawai’i, and Refugee State, a theatre project that fosters understanding, compassion, and communication between Oregon’s established communities and its growing refugee communities. (Twitter)

Ali Noorani is the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration. He holds a master’s degree in public health from Boston University and is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. (Instagram, Twitter)

Manuel Pastor is a professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at USC. He directs the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) and the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII). His books include Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration. He was awarded the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Wally Marks Changemaker of the Year award in 2012. (Twitter)

Roberto Suro (moderator) holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at USC. He is also director of the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute and the author of several books, including Writing Immigration: Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue, co-edited with Marcelo Suarez-Orozco and Vivian Louie; Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America; and Watching America’s Door: The Immigration Backlash and the New Policy Debate. (Twitter)

Related Event:
Music as Medicine
Renée Fleming and Antonio Damasio in Conversation
Monday, February 5, 2018, at 7 p.m.
Bovard Auditorium
For more info, click here.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Co-sponsored by El Centro Chicano.

Photo (Leilani Chan): Michael Burr