Augustana College held a faculty panel discussion on U.S. immigration enforcement, protests and constitutional rights on Feb. 23 in Hanson lecture hall. Students listened to four professors from different disciplines discuss topics regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the collective goal of informing students and promoting discussion.
Meg Kunde, a communications professor at Augustana, organized the event. She invited several professors to speak on the panel, including Brett Biebel, professor of English and creative writing; Paul Baumgardner, a political science professor; and Chris Strunk, a geology professor.
“[It] was really nice to show kind of the value of the liberal arts, that we can take different disciplinary perspectives and come together and have a conversation and try to lay out some of the complexities about this issue and see the value of these different perspectives coming together in that way,” Strunk said.
The event took three weeks to plan, and professors were able to prepare in advance for the discussion. The professors gravitated towards topics that they already had backgrounds in. Topics covered were constitutional laws and people’s rights, looking at how different communities respond to immigration policies and comparing past and present policies within the current context.
Many students showed up, making it one of the larger faculty presentations Baumgardner has seen. He loved seeing the student investment and engagement.
“I’m hoping that students who came to the talk who are democrats, republicans [and] independents all profited from the talk [and] learned something about it,” said Baumgardner, “That was a goal.”
Senior Aiden Koehe attended the event and said that the large attendance showed that students are eager to learn, making the panel a success.
“I think that the event was incredibly important to have,” Koehe said. “I think the spaces in which we can have these events are growing more and more limited because we’re becoming more and more polarized.”
The students and panelists felt safe discussing in Augustana’s space, despite the topic’s controversy.
Junior Minh Tran, an international student, also attended the event. According to Minh, many international students are confused and worried about the current immigration enforcement issues.
Going to the panel helped him have a better understanding of ICE and what to do if he encounters them, which makes him feel calmer.
“The professors there obviously did intensive research on things that us international students needed to know,” Minh said.
Both students and faculty hope to have more panels on immigration policies, American politics and any other discussions the campus wants to have.
Koehe said that for future panels, he would prefer to have a space of active dialogue instead of the traditional question-and-answer structure.
“I think spaces where faculty and students can come together and really just bounce ideas off of each other, learn more and inquire different questions is really kind of what the liberal arts education is all about,” Koehe said.
