Speakers Bureau Speaker
Brian Gratton, Ph.D., Tempe
Brian Gratton is Professor in the Department of History, Arizona State University, and he has published widely on immigration and immigration policy in the United States, Latin America and Europe. He has served as a Fulbright Fellow in Spain (1996) and Ecuador (2002). He was the Director of the Project, “Refuge & Rejection,” an on-line site for work by humanists on refugees. He has also participated extensively in projects with school districts in Arizona, bringing historians into collaboration with teachers and students in public schools.
Presentations may be made in Spanish, and are suitable for high school as well as adult audiences.
403 Years of Immigration to America:
Ethnicity, Public Opinion and Policy, 1607 to 2010
While immigration provides one of the central myths of our national identity, the reaction of the public to newcomers has often been less than welcoming. Using PowerPoint images, audio and video from a variety of eras and regions, including Arizona, Dr. Gratton explores core census and immigration evidence and records the strident views of supporters and opponents. Ethnicities among immigrants changed sharply, from English and African, to German and Irish, to Italian and Jewish, and to Mexican and Asian. Their successive experience reveals the long, difficult history of immigration, the sharp, often negative reaction to it among the American people, and an official policy that rarely reflected popular will. Concluding with a close review of ethnicity, reaction, and policy in the contemporary period, Gratton will let the audience judge whether history has lessons to teach us in the current debate.
Host organization provides screen for PowerPoint presentation.
