Speakers

Pre-CIS Speaker
Alejandro Portes
Sept. 25, 4pm
Location TBA

Alejandro Portes is a premiere sociologist currently teaching at Princeton University where he is also Director of the  Center for Migration and Development. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1944, Portes became a U.S. citizen in 1968. He is the author of several books and countless articles, and the recipient of many awards and honors. His book with co-author Ruben G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait, was recently released in a revised and expanded third edition. The book is considered a classic in the immigration studies field. Portes is also a much-sought after speaker since he is able to discuss immigration issues from a variety of standpoints and with a wealth of information. CURRICULUM VITAE

Opening Keynote Speaker
Luis Albert Urrea
Oct. 2, 7 p.m.
Dimnent Memorial Chapel

Luis Alberto Urrea, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph.

Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres and is currently published by Little, Brown and Company. The critically acclaimed author of 11 books, Urrea is an award-winning poet and essayist. The Devil's Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize. A national best-seller, The Devil's Highway was also named a best book of the year by the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, the Chicago Tribune, the Kansas City Star and many other publications.

Urrea's first book, Across the Wire, was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the Christopher Award. Urrea also won a 1999 American Book Award for his memoir, Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life and in 2000, he was voted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame following the publication of Vatos. His book of short stories, Six Kinds of Sky, was named the 2002 small-press Book of the Year in fiction by the editors of ForeWord magazine. He has also won a Western States Book Award in poetry for The Fever of Being and was in The 1996 Best American Poetry collection.

Urrea's most recent book, The Hummingbird's Daughter, is the culmination of 20 years of research and writing. The historical novel tells the story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as The Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc.

Urrea attended the University of California at San Diego, earning an undergraduate degree in writing, and did his graduate studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. After serving as a relief worker in Tijuana and a film extra and columnist-editor-cartoonist for several publications, Urrea moved to Boston where he taught expository writing and fiction workshops at Harvard. He has also taught at Massachusetts Bay Community College and the University of Colorado and he was the writer in residence at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

Urrea's other titles include By the Lake of Sleeping Children, In Search of Snow, Ghost Sickness and Wandering Time. His writing has won an American Book Award, a Western States Book Award, a Colorado Center for the Book Award and a Christopher Award. The Devil's Highway has been optioned for a film by CDI Producciones.

Urrea lives with his family in Naperville, IL, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Visit Luis Alberto Urrea's website

Morning Keynote Speaker (Oct. 3, 9:0am)

Morning Keynote Speaker
Stephanie J. Nawyn
Immigration and the Future of America
Oct. 3, 9 a.m.
Dimnent Memorial Chapel

Stephanie J. Nawyn is an assistant professor in Sociology at Michigan State University. Her research and teaching areas of expertise are in gender, immigration, religion, family, and race and ethnicity. Dr. Nawyn has conducted research on faith-based and secular organizations that resettle and assist refugees in the U.S. Work from this research appears in American Behavioral Scientist and the book Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants (Rutgers University Press: January 2007). Her current work focuses on immigrant community organizations and the transformation of gender norms post-migration.

Morning Focus Session Speakers (Oct. 3, 10:30am)

Andrew M. Yuengert
The Right to Migrate, Illegal Immigration, and the Rule of Law

Andrew M. Yuengert is a Professor of Economics at Seaver College, Pepperdine University. Professor Yuengert holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia and a PhD in economics from Yale University. He has taught economics at Pepperdine for thirteen years. Before coming to Pepperdine, he taught at Bates College in Maine, and was a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
      Professor Yuengert has made research contributions in several fields: labor economics, finance, the empirical study of religion, economic philosophy, and Catholic Social Teaching. He is a former President of the Association of Christian Economists, and currently serves as editor of the journal Faith and Economics.   Recent books include The Boundaries of Technique: Ordering Positive and Normative Concerns in Economic Research, from Lexington Books, and Inhabiting the Land: the Case for the Right to Migrate, published by the Acton Institute for Religion and Liberty.
      Professor Yuengert lives in Moorpark, California with his wife Elizabeth and their three children: Rachel, Aaron, and Joseph.

Jennifer Van Hook
Unauthorized Immigrants:  Their Current and Future Roles in American Society

Jennifer Van Hook received her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996. She worked as a research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. before joining the faculty at Bowling Green State University from 1999 to 2007. She is currently an associate professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Van Hook's research seeks to evaluate and revise methods for estimating the size, growth, and characteristics of the unauthorized migrant population living in the United States. Van Hook is also engaged in research that focuses on the health and well-being of the children of immigrants, including patterns and trends in household/family structure, child poverty, welfare receipt, food security, and child obesity. In general, her research focuses on the relationship between the policy contexts of reception and the incorporation patterns of immigrants and their children.

Mike Wilson and Dan DeVivo
Crossing Arizona Discussion

Native American humanitarian Mike Wilson was stirred into action by the growing number of migrant deaths occurring on the Tohono O’odham Nation. Each Saturday he drives into the desert to replenish the water stations he maintains on tribal lands. For Wilson, politics and policy are as arbitrary as the border itself; his line-in-the-sand is life vs. death.

Dan DeVivo graduated from Harvard University in 1999 with a B.A. in social anthropology and a desire to delve into the world of independent documentary filmmaking. He spent the next several years honing his filmmaking skills in the field. Based in New York City, Dan has worked on several projects, including Counting On Democracy and We Are Family. In 2002 Dan partnered to produce and edit Refusing To Die: A Kenyan Story, which chronicles political turmoil within the former British colony through the experiences of Koigi Wa Wamwere. Dan hopes Crossing Arizona will put a human face on the issue of immigration

Afternoon Focus Session Speakers (Oct. 3, 1:00 pm)

Catherine E. Wilson
The Metamorphosis of Immigration Reform in the United States

Dr. Catherine E. Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Non-Profit Coordinator of the Masters of Public Administration Program at Villanova University.   Her fields of study include: American politics, religion and politics, Latino politics, and identity politics.  Dr. Wilson received her B.A. in Philosophy from Villanova University, her M.A. in Latin American Studies from the Edmund J. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.  Her dissertation topic centered on the social and political involvement of Latino faith-based organizations (FBOs) in three inner-city neighborhoods in the United States.  The revised dissertation manuscript, entitled The Politics of Latino Faith: Religion, Identity, and Urban Community , is under contract with New York University Press with a publication date set for early 2008.  Her current research will explore the degree and kind of social service provision by nonprofit organizations in their outreach to Mexican mushroom workers in Kennett Square, PA. 

Vincent Delgado
Welcoming the Immigrant

A partner with the Global Workshop, LLC, and Director of Lansing’s Refugee Development Center, Vincent Delgado has a decade of experience speaking and writing about international and refugee issues. He assisted in the founding of Lansing’s Refugee Development Center, the only high-technology development center of its kind in the nation and has served as Refugee Services director of resettlement, managing 15 staffers in the smooth resettlement of 600 refugees annually. Refugee Services is a program of St. Vincent Catholic Charities.A former print journalist with a decade of experience covering conflict in Central America, labor in Mexico and politics and local government in the United States, his work has appeared in major newspapers, travel magazines and several Washington, D.C.-based political newsletters.The Colorado native is fluent in Spanish and has worked as an English as a Foreign Language instructor. He maintains significant contacts with experts in the migration and humanitarian aid community and is a frequent speaker on international topics.Delgado is the author of the documentary cookbook A Taste of Freedom: A Culinary Journey with America’s Refugees, published by The Global Workshop in September, 2003. He was named International Humanitarian of the Year for the American Red Cross Great Lakes Region in both 2005 and 2006.

Gerrit-Bartus M. Dielissen
The Netherlands: A Reluctant Immigrant Nation.

Gerrit-Bartus M. Dielissen is a professor of sociology at Utrecht University, Department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, The Netherlands. His areas of specialization include social theory, culture and knowledge. His research interests include the migrant as a sociological category, national debates on ethnic minorities, the role of religion in identity formation and ‘migrant intellectuals’. He has published recently on the sociology of intellectuals, on developing an international agenda for inclusion in higher education and on the tension between human rights and group rights. He is a member of the ‘European Research Centre on Migration and Ethic Relation’ (ERCOMER)  at Utrecht University, as well as a member of the faculty of Utrecht’s honors undergraduate college (UCU). He is also the European coordinator for the Howard/Utrecht US FIPSE-EU Exchange program on ‘Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies’ (REMS), which also involves the Central European University in Budapest, the Universidade de Coimbra, the University of Edinburgh, Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas – El Paso.

Fariyal Ross-Sheriff
Migration to America: African Experience

Dr. Ross-Sheriff has worked extensively with Muslim refugees in Pakistan to examine the challenges facing refugees and service providers, and in Afghanistan to facilitate the repatriation and resettlement of refugees.  In addition, she has conducted research on the role of women in the repatriation process.  She has conducted training for service providers and made several presentations at professional conferences on refugee issues in countries of first asylum and different aspects of adaptation of refugees and immigrants to the United States.  She serves as a member on the editorial boards of Social Thought, Affilia, Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Services, and Social Development Issues.

Among her many publication are co-edited two books:  Mental Health and People of Color: Curriculum Development and Change, Howard University Press, 1983, Social Work Practice with Asian Americans, Sage Publications, Inc. 1992, and co-authored monographs entitled Muslim Refugees in the United States: A Guide for Service Providers and Al-Ummah: a handbook for the development of Muslim identity for North American Muslim youth, and sole authored research papers on adaptation of Muslim women to American society.

Richard Kessler
Can Humans Be Illegal? A  Legal Perspective on Current Immigration Law & Enforcement

RICHARD KESSLER was born in, grew up in and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He worked as a staff attorney at the Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project for 5 years and then opened the Law Office of Richard Kessler where he has practiced law for 20 years. Immigration and Human Rights Law are Attorney Kessler's special expertise, although he does practice in other areas of law, including Personal Injury and Workers Comp. He speaks fluent Spanish, has served on the board of the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan and also served as past chair of the Michigan Migrant Legal Assistance Project and as past president of the Michigan Coalition for Immigrant Rights. He participated in the Lawyers for Human Rights Delegation to El Salvador and Nicaragua during the 1980's and 1990's. Mr. Kessler is married to Lucy Godoy from Honduras, has three children and is a member of the Jewish Congregation Rodef Shalom.