Class of ’48 Lecture Focuses on Immigration, Globalization

Lecturer and author Marcelo Suarez-Orozco presented this year’s Class of ’48 Lecture April 14 in the Burgin Center’s Simon Theatre. The talk was the final event in Mercersburg’s 2007–2008 Monday Evening Lecture Series.

Suarez-Orozco has made an incalculable contribution to the worldwide discussion on the far-reaching implications of immigration and globalization. A member of the National Academy of Education, he serves as the Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Globalization and Education at New York University. The co-founder of the Harvard Immigration Projects, he has also served as that university’s tenured professor of human development and psychology, as well as its Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education and Culture. He was also co-director of the largest study in the history of the National Science Foundation’s cultural anthropology division—a comprehensive study of Asian, Afro-Caribbean, and Latino immigrant youth in American society.

Suarez-Orozco is co-author of Learning in a New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society, a book based on an extraordinary study that followed 400 newly arrived children from the Caribbean, China, Central America, and Mexico for five years; how they adapt will determine the nature of America in the 21st century. The winner of the 2008 Stone Award for the Best Book on Education, it provides a compelling account of the lives, dreams, ironies, and frustrations of these young immigrants. In Learning in the Global Era, Suarez-Orozco’s new anthology, he grapples with the challenges of educating a global generation of youth in our rapidly changing world. With a keen attention to cultural diversity, he offers insights and constructive approaches that will be indispensable to educators and policy-makers planning for the future.

"The United States is one of the few post-industrial states in which immigration is both its history and destiny," Suarez-Orozco said in his talk to assembled students, faculty, the Mercersburg community, and invited guests. He told audience members that from the time they wake up each morning until they go to bed, $1 trillion crosses national boundaries; and that every second, 25 people cross a national border somewhere in the world.

Even with the increased focus and attention on immigration as a hot-button issue, Suarez-Orozco said, the U.S. and many of the world's most developed countries have failed to link their immigration policies to labor-market policies. "Love, work, and war drive human movement," he said, "and post-industrial nation-states have found this increasingly difficult to manage."

A sought-after speaker, Suarez-Orozco has addressed the UN Secretary General’s First Annual Global Colloquium of University Presidents, and delivered a high-profile keynote on globalization, immigration, and education for the Mexican foreign minister and the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He has also been a visiting professor of psychology at the University of Barcelona in Spain, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Suarez-Orozco was educated in Latin America and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Made possible through the generosity of an anonymous member of Mercersburg’s Class of 1948, the lecture is intended to bring to the school’s community speakers of national renown in various academic areas.

Previous speakers in this year's Monday Evening Lecture Series included Stephen Prothero (Schaff Lecture on Ethics and Morals), Kwame Appiah (Jacobs Residency Lecture), and Tim Flannery (Ammerman Family Lecture).