Institute presents lecture from leading expert on migration and immigration

February 15, 2007

Chapel Hill, N.C. — The Institute for the Arts and Humanities will host one of the world's leading experts on issues of migration and immigration during the Weil Lecture on American Citizenship, Wednesday evening, March 28, at 8 p.m.

Dr. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education and Co-Director of Immigration Studies at NYU, will speak about "Immigration and Education." The lecture is free and open to the public and will be held in the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Auditorium on the UNC-CH campus.

Educated in Latin America and at the University of California-Berkeley, Suárez-Orozco co-founded the Harvard Immigration Projects in 1997 and began to co-direct the largest study ever funded in the history of the National Science Foundation's comparative, interdisciplinary and longitudinal study of Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino immigrant youth in American Society. His research examines the implications of globalization for children and youth growing up today and explores why new and broader global visions are needed to educate children and youth, allowing them to be informed, engaged and critical citizens in the new millennium. Studying such topics as bilingual education, assimilation and preservation of one's own cultural tradition, he examines the current wave of immigrants compared to earlier waves and considers the implications for business and society.

Among Professor Suárez-Orozco's many publications are: The New Immigration: An Interdisciplinary Reader (co-edited with Carola Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Qin-Hilliard, 2005); Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (co-edited with Desirée Qin-Hilliard, 2004); Latinos: Remaking America (co-edited with Mariela Paez, 2002); and the six-volume Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the New Immigration (co-edited with Carola Suárez-Orozco and Desirée Qin-Hilliard, 2001).

The Weil Lecture in American Citizenship, endowed by the family of Gertrude Weil (an active and committed Southern reformer of the 20th century), began in 1915. Its lecturers have included former Presidents William Howard Taft and Jimmy Carter, Senator Nancy Kassebaum, Eleanor Roosevelt, former CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr, Walter Dellinger, former NC Governor James Martin, former Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps, The Honorable Patricia Schroeder, Jonathan Kozol, Kevin Phillips, and Anna Deavere Smith.