LACIS

(10/29-10/31): Alumni-in-Residence: Jacob Kushner

LACIS is pleased to welcome former student, Jacob Kushner, back to campus for a week-long residency this October!

Jacob is a foreign correspondent who writes about migration, conflict and extremism and investigates foreign aid, corruption and extrajudicial killings in East/Central Africa and the Caribbean. As a Fulbright Fellow in 2017-18, Jacob investigated terrorism against immigrants in Germany. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The Guardian, VICE Magazine, The Nation, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic and elsewhere. Originally from Milwaukee, Jacob received his B.A. in journalism and Latin American studies from UW-Madison. He also holds an M.A. in political journalism from Columbia University. He spent two years reporting from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, starting off with help from a LACIS travel grant. His Haiti reporting is often supported by grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. In 2016, Jacob was named among the world’s leading journalists doing solutions-based reporting by the Solutions Journalism Network. In 2018, he was named a Finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists for Excellence in International Reporting. He is a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good.

His visit will feature a variety of special events including panel sessions, career presentations, and public lectures.

Please join us!

(10/22): "From the Grounds Up: Building the Economy and the State in 19th Century Mexico"

Presented by Casey Lurtz, Assistant Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University.

In the late nineteenth century, Latin American exports boomed. From Chihuahua to Patagonia, producers sent industrial fibers, tropical fruits, and staple goods across oceans to satisfy the ever-increasing demand from foreign markets. In this talk, Casey Lurtz uses the growing coffee economy of southernmost Mexico to examine who built these export economies and how they transformed rural societies.

Free and Open to the Public
A light lunch will be served on a first come, first served basis.

(10/22): Film Screening: "The Unafraid"

"THE UNAFRAID" is a feature length documentary that follows the personal lives of three DACAmented students in Georgia, a state that has banned undocumented and DACA students from attending their top five public universities and disqualifies them from receiving in-state tuition at any other public college. Shot over a period of four years, this film takes an intimate look at the lives of Alejandro, Silvia and Aldo and the obstacles they face in their home state when trying to go to college. This is also a story about family and the systemic challenges faced by the working poor and undocumented in the Deep South.