I was honored to speak January 22 at the Emerging Leaders Summit put together by Womensphere, a fantastic organization that inspires and empowers women.
My panel, with a group of inspiring women leaders working on education, microfinance, widows issues, poverty, the environment, and other important issues, was on challenges and solutions to international development. You can see and hear what I had to say by following this link.
Happy New Year!
Despite best intentions, I didn’t quite finish my annual best-of list in 2009 itself, but it’s still a great way to welcome the new year with a list of great reading and thinking material. So I’m dubbing my slightly late Best-of-2009 list the 2010 Reading List! (For the 2008 list click HERE.)
For those of you who are new to the list, every year I compile a selection of books, film and other creative work by my talented friends and colleagues. I hope that I’ve included everyone, but if you published something in 2009 that is not included here, please let me know. (If it’s my fault for forgetting, I beg forgiveness and promise to plug you–but if you didn’t tell me about it, how did that happen?)
The list started a few years back as a way to “pay forward” all of the support and help that friends gave in helping me publicize Lockout and Why the Cocks Fight. I wanted to make an extra effort to spread the word about their wonderful work. If any of the books on this list appeal to you, for your own reading or as a gift, please make a special effort to pick up a book at the bookstore or order it online. In these perilous times for publishing, authors need all the help we can get! Continue reading “2010 Reading List (Michele’s Best of 2009)”
I’ll be speaking at the “Right to Move: Debating the Ethics of Global Migration” conference at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, December 12-13th, 2009, organized by Carnegie Council Global Policy Innovations and Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture.
Here’s a description of my presentation:
Linking Ethics and Self-Interest in Human Mobility
Facing demographic and economic challenges, countries around the world are reconsidering the policies that govern migrant rights: the basis on which people are allowed to enter a country, the access that non-citizens have to services and rights, and the ability of non-citizens to naturalize. What are the consequences for citizens, societies, and economies of the decisions they make about who gets the right to move? How do limitations on the rights of others to move to a country, to become citizens, and to participate in the workforce and in social and political structures affect established citizens of those countries? What are the most ethical regimes involving human mobility—and how do they compare to policies that might maximize the well-being of citizens and non-citizens?
Panel descriptions and biographies are HERE
You can find the full agenda HERE
As many of you know, I was back and forth to Washington, DC many times over the past year to take part in an unusual gathering of scholars and thinkers on immigration policy. The Brookings-Duke Immigration Policy Roundtable organizers, Noah Pickus, Peter Skerry and Bill Galston convened a group as diverse as possible without members being likely to strangle each other by being in the same room –but they weren’t far off! The idea was to see what this disparate bunch could agree on (or at least agree to disagree on), in hopes that it might provide some guidance to the Obama administration as it tackles long-overdue immigration reform. We made it through somehow with a report that would have been different had I (or any of us) written it ourselves. Nevertheless, it gives a pretty good sense of some of the tradeoffs that might be politically feasible and result in a policy that, while not perfect, would significantly improve upon the mess that we have now.
That report, available in PDF format here, was released October 6. Links to the executive summary, the Spanish version, and the Brookings launch event transcript are available here. I’ll be part of a panel discussing it further at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC on October 23.
Here’s more information about the report:
The Obama administration has committed itself to immigration reform. Yet despite all the shortcomings of current policy — threats to the rule of law, exploitation of vulnerable newcomers, real and perceived competition with Americans for jobs and public resources — reasonable compromise on immigration will be exceedingly difficult. The divide between elite and public opinion on this issue remains deep and wide. It is a critical factor in the lack of trust that pervades today’s political culture.
This distrust was readily apparent in November 2008 when the Immigration Policy Roundtable first convened its twenty participants. The Roundtable is a joint undertaking of the Brookings Institution and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. The group’s distinctive feature is that its members came to the table with divergent, often conflicting perspectives on immigration. In fact, the range of political and ideological views represented at the Roundtable is unprecedented in recent immigration policymaking. Continue reading ““Breaking the Immigration Stalemate” report released”
Hi everyone, Michele here. I’m in the middle of transferring my website to wordpress, so bear with me for the next few days while Joe and I get it up to speed.