Marcelo Suárez-Orozco Will Offer Colloquium on Mass Migration

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco—chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a leading scholar on topics related to immigration and mass migration—will offer a Presidential Colloquium on “Humanitarianism, Education and Mass Migration: Confronting the World Crisis” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8.

The virtual event is open to all at no charge. Smith students, faculty, staff and alums are invited to participate via Zoom. Members of the general public will be able to watch the event via livestream on Smith College’s Facebook page.

About Marcelo Suárez-Orozco

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Prior to his return to the Commonwealth, he served as the inaugural Wasserman Dean and Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Suárez-Orozco’s research focuses on conceptual and empirical problems in the areas of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, with a focus on the study of mass migration, globalization and education.

He is the author of numerous scholarly essays, award-winning books and edited volumes, as well as scholarly papers, in a range of disciplines and languages, that have been published in international journals, including Harvard Educational Review, “Revue Française de Pédagogie,” Harvard Business Review, “Cultuur en Migratie, Temas: Cultura, Ideologia y Sociedad,” Ethos, International Migration, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, The Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Annual Reviews of Anthropology and others. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, W. T. Grant, Spencer, Rockefeller, Hewlett, Ford and Carnegie, and multiple others.

At Harvard, Suárez-Orozco served as the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education and as a member of the Inaugural Executive Committee of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. In 1997, with Carola Suárez-Orozco, he co-founded the Harvard Immigration Project and co-directed the largest study ever funded in the history of the National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology division—a study of Asian, Caribbean and Latino immigrant youth in American society. The award-winning book reporting the results of this landmark study, “Learning A New Land: Immigrant Students in American Society,” was published by Harvard University Press in 2008.

At NYU, Suárez-Orozco served as the inaugural Courtney Sale Ross University Professor. He has been visiting professor of psychology at the University of Barcelona, visiting professor of social sciences at “L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales,” Paris, visiting professor of anthropology at the Catholic University of Leuven, fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, where he wrote with Carola Suárez-Orozco the award-winning “Transformations: Migration, Family Life and Achievement Motivation among Latino Adolescents” (Stanford University Press, 1995). He also was the Fisher Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and held the Norbert Elias Lectureship at the Amsterdam School for Social Sciences, The Netherlands.

Suárez-Orozco regularly contributes to national and international media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others.

In 2004, Suárez-Orozco was elected to the National Academy of Education. In 2006, he was awarded the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle—Mexico’s highest honor, bestowed by the President of Mexico to a foreign national.

He has served as special adviser for education, peace, and justice to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He currently serves as trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and is on the Governance and Trust Boards of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2018, Suárez-Orozco was named Great Immigrant/Great American by The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and in 2019, Pope Francis appointed him to the executive board of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in the Holy See.

Suárez-Orozco earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology, as well as master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology, at the University of California, Berkeley.

About the Presidential Colloquium Series

Smith College’s Presidential Colloquium regularly features influential thought leaders in a wide range of fields—from poets and writers to economists and policy experts—to share their expertise, offer insights and inspire discourse on key social, political and global topics that call for attention.

In 2020-21, all colloquium events will be offered virtually. Smith College students, staff, faculty and alums are invited to pre-register to participate via Zoom; the general public is welcome to watch via Facebook. All lectures are free.