News

The St. Olaf College Institute for Freedom & Community will host a panel discussion on Tuesday, February 19, titled “The Immigration Trilemma: Local Sovereignty, Freedom of Movement, and the Global Community” as part of its 2019 spring series, Who Is My Neighbor? Immigration, Freedom, and Community.

The discussion, which will begin at 7 p.m. in Viking Theater, will be moderated by Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom & Community Edmund Santurri and feature scholars Jason Brennan, Natalia Molina, and Jan Ting. It is free and open to the public, and will be streamed live and available on demand online.

About the Speakers

• Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, and a research professor at the University of Arizona’s Freedom Center and Department of Political Economy and Moral Science. He earned his Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Arizona. He is the author of nine books, including When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice; In Defense of Openness: Why Global Freedom Is the Humane Solution to Global Poverty, with Bas van der Vossen; Against Democracy; and Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know. His books have been translated 16 times, into Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, Turkish, German, Italian, Polish, Greek, Mongolian, and Swedish. He has published papers in numerous journals of philosophy and ethics and contributed op-eds to the Washington Post, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other popular outlets.
• Natalia Molina is a professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her work lies at the intersections of race, gender, culture, and citizenship. She is currently expanding her award-winning article, “The Importance of Place and Place-makers in the Life of a Los Angeles Community: What Gentrification Erases from Echo Park” into a book and is the author of two award-winning books: Fit to be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939, and How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. Prior to USC, Molina also taught and served as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Diversity and Equity at the University of California at San Diego. She recently concluded a six-year term on the board of California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Jan C. Ting is professor emeritus of law at the Temple University Beasley School of Law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ting joined the faculty of law in 1977, and teaches in the areas of citizenship and immigration law and tax law. Ting also served as Assistant Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., from 1990 to 1993, where he received the Executive Management Team Leadership Award, and he is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Immigration Studies. He has provided commentary for the PBS News Hour and National Public Radio, and is a frequent panelist on the public affairs program “Inside Story” on Channel 6-ABC in Philadelphia. He has been invited several times to present testimony to the Judiciary and other Committees of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Established at St. Olaf in 2014, the Institute for Freedom and Community encourages free inquiry and meaningful debate of important political and social issues. Through its range of programming for students, faculty, and the general public, the Institute offers a distinctive opportunity to cultivate civil discourse within the context of the liberal arts.

Visit the Institute’s website for the full list of 2018-19 speakers, and sign up for the quarterly newsletter to receive regular updates and information about Institute programming.