At the centennial of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, A K Sandoval-Strausz, Tobias Brinkmann and Jennifer Van Hook, faculty members for Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, shifted their focus to educating the community on the impacts of immigration.
This year’s theme of the College of the Liberal Arts’ Moments of Change Initiative is “Immigration, Identity, Citizenship.” With a new theme each year, the program strives to educate the community on living through significant times of change.
The group works to garner student engagement and involvement through field trips, events featuring guest speakers and featured courses focused on immigration.
“As an educator, it is really part of our responsibility to engage the public in thinking about issues of both historical interest and present importance,” Sandoval-Strausz, director of Latina/o studies and professor of history, said.
Overall, Brinkmann, associate professor of Jewish studies and history, said the Moments of Change Initiative is a great way to educate students and faculty on pressing issues.
Brinkmann said the act “overhauled” immigration, putting quotas in place for all countries. However, there was an emphasis on excluding immigrants that weren’t white or Protestant.
Sandoval-Strausz began to develop the idea for the initiative in 2022. He raised the idea for this year's theme at a College of Liberal Arts head of directors meeting and received a good response.
“The nice thing about Moments of Change is that you have a sense already of what it’s going to look like,” Sandoval-Strausz said. “So it’s just slotting in what the classes look like, what the speakers look like, what the trips look like and what other kinds of events we can do.”
Brinkmann said he “lobbied hard” for the initiative. Though all three colleagues work in different fields, they found a common ground in immigration as it has impacted each of their areas of study.
Leading up to carrying out this year’s initiative, the group had been meeting in informal workshops that are composed of faculty and graduate students.
The College of Liberal Arts inside the Sparks Building on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 in University Park, Pa.
From funding the initiative to planning guest lectures, Sandoval-Strausz said the process unfolded quickly after pitching the idea.
Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography and director of the Population Research Institute, said this initiative is even more important today because of the many parallels between 1924 and 2024, with lasting perceptions of immigrants as “different” leading to the concept of an “immigration problem.”
“We are at this period of time where there has been a lot of new immigration,” Van Hook said. “They’re likewise coming from different cultures and religious groups than what is seen as sort of ‘American,’ and so they’re perceived as very foreign.”
Van Hook said she grew up in a community with a large Dutch population, who often spoke Dutch and continued with the many traditions in their new home.
In time, she began to see more Mexican immigrants coming, who were met with less “accommodations,” which feeds into that idea of “closing the door behind you.”
This inspired her work of pushing people to listen to stories of immigration and connect the stories of the past to the present as they have “quite a bit in common.”
For Brinkmann, some of the most important issues are the discourse behind the notion that “immigrants are taking away jobs,” and the comparison of refugees and “economic migrants,” who move in order to pursue opportunities they cannot find in their home country.
“In reality these are very artificial terms that are based on legal definitions that vary from country to country,” Brinkmann said. “Most people fall right in the middle.”
All three colleagues discussed present-day negative discourse around limiting immigration, which further prompted their need to put this initiative in place.
The initiative has been in effect since January 2024 and will be active throughout the year. It has already prompted many guest speakers, a trip to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and courses intended to educate on the topic.
As the initiative continues, there will be more events and opportunities for community and student engagement. Upcoming guest lecturers include author David Fitzgerald in April and anthropologist Jason De León in September.
“I hope to ensure that when people think about immigration … that is just a matter of discussion,” Sandoval-Strausz said.
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