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[MUSIC PLAYING]
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SANDRA BERMANN: Good morning.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: Hi.
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How are you?
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SANDRA BERMANN: How are you?
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SUBJECT: Coffee all?
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SANDRA BERMANN: Yes.
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Coffee would be great, thank you.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: Me too, please.
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Thank you.
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SANDRA BERMANN: You know, the whole question
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of migration through the ages --
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since biblical times, we've had it.
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But now, in our lived history, we have a refugee crisis.
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We have more migration than we've had since World War II.
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And I started thinking about this community
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and the possibility of having one
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in doing my own work on translation studies but also
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literary history and started to realize
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how much I needed to know to talk about some
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of these things in the current period.
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So I went to a couple of colleagues
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and talked with them, learned a lot,
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and started to think about how much
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it would mean to have a group of faculty
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from roundabout campus who could talk about these things
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and, in innovative ways, share knowledge,
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share ways of thinking about this issue,
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and how, eventually, this could have a huge ripple effect
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on campus through our teaching, through having
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student affiliates, graduate and undergraduates.
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And, perhaps, over time, we will see
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opportunities for changing the public discourse
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and developing it into something that
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can create better solutions or at least
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better debates about them.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: Yeah.
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We probably need to understand why people see this issue,
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you know, so differently, disagree so widely --
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where they're coming from, what their perceptions
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are, what their misperceptions are,
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and how this can be clarified.
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One of the things I find most interesting
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is that this is an issue that doesn't
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cut across the usual left-right divide cleanly.
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There are liberals that worry about high levels
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of immigration because of the impact on the working class.
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There are conservatives that worry
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about high levels of immigration both for that reason
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but also because of effects on the culture
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and because of concerns about cultural stability.
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On the other hand, there are progressives
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that are in favor, of course, of high levels of immigration,
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generous policy towards refugees and poorer
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migrants from abroad.
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And, likewise, there are conservatives
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who believe in open markets and open borders, a little
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more libertarian.
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So these issues are difficult ones
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for both of the major political parties, in a way.
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And it makes them interesting.
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Then the question of who is a refugee
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is a central one that hasn't been all together settled.
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It's a disputed category in international law.
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And are people that move out of great poverty refugees
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or merely economic migrants?
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A lot of these issues need a lot more attention
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as a matter of policy and law.
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SANDRA BERMANN: Absolutely.
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And one of the fascinating things
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is the whole use of language and translation, because what
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if you are migrant and you do not
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understand the language of the country
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into which you've migrated?
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To have good translation that's consistent --
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these questions have always fascinated me.
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And I think those were some of the issues that attracted me,
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at the beginning, trying to think about this much more
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broadly.
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So there are all these questions in the humanities
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that fit into this larger issue of migration.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: I guess another question
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is, you know, what does it mean to be an American?
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And what does it mean to be French in periods of rising
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and large-scale immigration?
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How do narratives change?
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And I know that scholars of literature are studying that.
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SANDRA BERMANN: Absolutely.
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I mean, the question of narratives and narratives
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of migration is absolutely huge and crosses the disciplines.
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And we each look at it very differently.
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But if you think of, as you were saying,
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the narratives that tell us our nationhood
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or why governments choose certain programs --
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migration programs -- then there are also
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the journalists’ stories that try
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to get very close to the migrant lives and can be short
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or in book form.
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And then there are, of course, all the literary narratives --
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literary and filmic, visual arts, music --
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that explore other aspects of it.
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So it's a huge question -- a huge cultural question.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: Yeah.
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And one of the exciting things about the research community
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is that scholars bring all of these different perspectives
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to bear.
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I mean, some people are unnerved by these changes in what it
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means to be an American.
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SANDRA BERMANN: Of course.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: But the American story
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is one of constant change.
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SANDRA BERMANN: Absolutely.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: And it's great strength
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that we have an immigrant history.
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SANDRA BERMANN: It's so interesting
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to hear what other national perspectives are on this, which
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can be very different, and to have people in our research
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community who are working on, you know, the Pacific Asian
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world, who are working on Europe and also
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Latin America and the U.S. and many other parts of the world,
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the Middle East.
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So it's really very interesting comparatively, as well,
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in terms of region.
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STEPHEN MACEDO: Yeah.
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And we've got here some of the best scholars in the Woodrow
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Wilson School, sociology, political science,
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in my neck of the woods, also -- philosophy, economics --
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working on both the empirical and the moral dimensions
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of these questions.
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And I look forward to, you know, doing more.
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