UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Immigration is the focus of the current offering in the College of the Liberal Arts’ “Moments of Change” initiative — an undertaking that brings students, faculty, staff and alumni together to explore what it means to live through historic and contemporary times of change.
Through spring 2025, “Moments of Change: Immigration, Identity, and Citizenship” will examine human migration and highlight the stories of students, faculty, staff and alumni doing work in this space.
The theme for the latest offering in the college’s ongoing “Moments of Change” initiative marks the centennial of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, an immigration law that culminated a campaign to reduce immigration to the United States. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million migrants — predominantly Southern and Eastern Europeans — came to the United States. The nation’s governing class, overwhelmingly of Northern European ancestry and Protestant religion, saw these Catholic and Jewish newcomers as a threat to American culture. They enacted the Johnson-Reed Act with the explicit goal of “setting back the clock” — the law imposed strict ethnic and racial quotas on legal immigration, severely restricting arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and extending the previous ban on Chinese immigrants so that it excluded all Asians. As a result, the overall rate of immigration to the United States fell by 80%. These restrictions stayed in place for over 40 years until they were abolished by the Immigration Act of 1965.
“A century later, the country is once again grappling with immigration — this time from Latin America and Asia — and the rapidly growing racial and ethnic heterogeneity that has accompanied it,” said Jennifer Van Hook, Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography and director of the Population Research Institute.
The goal of the theme is to explore the parallels and differences between “then” (100 years ago) and “now” — both in the United States and around the world — exploring how the immigration experience and our responses to immigration have changed over the last century.
“Questions of immigration, identity and citizenship are of great importance both nationally and globally,” said Richard Page, associate dean for undergraduate studies and associate professor of German and linguistics in the College of the Liberal Arts. “The theme gives us an opportunity to explore these questions in a historical context from both national and global perspectives.”
The first of the theme’s events — “Johnstown, PA, and the Invention of America's ‘Immigration Problem’” — will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 24, in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. Katherine Benton-Cohen, professor of history at Georgetown University and author of “Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy,” will discuss Pennsylvania’s place in American immigration history, revealing Johnstown’s pivotal role in the largest and most important study of the nation’s immigrants — one that shaped more than four decades of U.S. policy. The event is co-sponsored by the College of the Liberal Arts and the Latina/o studies program.
“At a time of widespread debate and disinformation about immigration, it makes sense for our flagship university to share the most accurate information produced by historians, sociologists, economists and other researchers so that all Pennsylvanians can make informed choices about public policy,” said A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, director of the Latina/o studies program and professor of history.
In addition to planning events, the college will share stories of students, faculty, staff and alumni doing work in this space, as well as related courses, student organizations and resources. Visit the theme webpage to learn more.
This is the fourth time in recent years that Liberal Arts has had a college-wide theme — Creating a Livable Planet, 2023–24; A Century of Women’s Activism, 2020–21; and Remembering 1968, 2017–18.