Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies Penn Professors Sign the Following Letter in Support of DACA Students at the University of Pennsylvania
November 14, 2016
To: President Amy Gutmann
From: Faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania
Re: Students holding DACA status
Our respect for the University of Pennsylvania as an institution centered on civility has grown as we have seen administrators, faculty, and students respond to the divisiveness of the 2016 election. We value your efforts to reach out to all of us to ensure that none feel themselves to be in danger.
As members of the faculty, we would like to highlight the uniquely vulnerable position of undocumented immigrant students. The passage of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) as an executive action in 2012 granted undocumented immigrants who entered the country before their 16th birthday and before June 2007 temporary protection from deportation. DACA allowed them to pursue academic study and enrich our universities. DACA students attend the University of Pennsylvania and we benefit from their presence on our campus. President-elect Trump is likely to either cancel DACA or allow it to lapse.
We urge you to:
· Communicate to political leaders the significant contribution of undocumented students to academic life and resist attempts to eliminate DACA.
· Take immediate steps to ensure that undocumented students continue to receive the financial aid and fellowship stipends that Penn has extended to them under DACA.
· Provide vehicles for on-campus employment or research stipends to allow undocumented students to support themselves. For years, students holding DACA status have been legally allowed to work with authorization documents issued by USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services). If such authorization documents become unavailable, the University should take action.
· Explicitly communicate to the academic community how the University will support immigrant students, now and in upcoming academic years.
Penn has a moral and practical responsibility to reach out to these students, represent them, and devise policies that address their needs. They have become an integral part of Penn’s initiative to achieve excellence through diversity and we should give them a voice. Sending a clear message now is necessary to reinforce our deep commitment to making our campus a place that upholds inclusion, diversity, and fairness as core values.
Signatures of Standing Faculty
Amada Armenta, Associate Professor of Sociology
Paolo E. Arratia, Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Eiichiro Azuma, Alan Charles Kors Term Associate Professor of History
David S. Barnes, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science
Haim H. Bau, Professor, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM)
Ericka Beckman, Associate Professor of Romance Languages
Jere R. Behrman, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics
Nancy Bentley, Donald T. Regan Professor of English
Charles Bernstein, Donald T. Regan Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Toni Bowers, Professor of English
S. Pearl Brilmyer, Assistant Professor of English
Kathleen Brown, David Boies Professor of History
Vatinee Bunya, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology; Co-Director Penn Dry-Eye and Ocular Surface Center
Román de la Campa, Edwin B. and Lenore R. Williams Professor of Romance Languages
Jean-Christophe Cloutier, Assistant Professor of English
Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Rita Copeland, Professor of Classical Studies, English, and Comparative Literature and Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor of Humanities
Timothy Corrigan, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, English, and History of Art
Peter Decherney, Professor of English
Ezekiel Dixon-Román, Associate Professor of Social Policy and Practice; Chair, Data Analytics for Social Policy Certificate Program
Ivan Dmochowski, Professor and Undergraduate Chair of Chemistry
Angela Duckworth, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology; Founder and Scientific Director Character Lab
David L. Eng, Richard L. Fisher, Professor of English and Graduate Chair of Department of English
James F. English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and Director; Penn Humanities Forum; and Director of Price Lab for Digital Humanities
Hildegund C.J. Ertl, Caspar Wistar Professor in Vaccine Research; Professor, The Wistar Institute Vaccine Center
Zahra Fakhraai, Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Tulia Falleti, Class of 1965 Term Associate Professor of Political Science; Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program; and Senior Fellow Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics
Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Associate Professor of History
Kristen Feemster, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine
Siyen Fei, Associate Professor and Diretor of Undergraduate Studies of History
Antonio Feros, Associate Professor of History
Ana Cecelia Fieler, Assistant Professor of Economics
Chenoa A. Flippen, Associate Professor of Sociology and Population Studies Center
Ian Frank, Professor of Medicine, Infectious Disease Division and Director, Clinical/Therapeutics Program and Clinical Core
Michael Gamer, Associate Professor of English
Antonio Garcia, Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Child Well-being and Child Welfare Specialization (CW2) in School of Social Policy and Practice
Sebastián Gil-Riaño, Assistant Professor of History & Sociology of Science
Bruce J. Giantonio, Associate Professor of Medicine, The Perelman School of Medicine
Loren Goldman, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Glenda Goodman, Assistant Professor of Music
Sarah Barringer Gordon, Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History
Marie Gottschalk, Professor of Political Science
Etan Green, Assistant Professor of Wharton, Operations, Information and Decisions
Jeff Green, Associate Professor of Political Science
Guy Grossman, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Michael Hanchard, Professor of Africana Studies
Dan Hopkins, Associate Professor of Political Science
Yue Hou, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Nancy Hirschmann, Professor of Political Science; Director, Program on Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies; Director, Alice Paul Center for Research on Gender, Sexuality and Women
Nancy Hornberger, Educational Linguistics Division, Graduate School of Education
Daniel H. Janzen, Professor of Conservation Biology
Michael Jones-Correa, Presidential Professor and Professor of Political Science
Suvir Kaul, A. M. Rosenthal Professor of English
David Kazanjian, Professor of English
Seith F. Kreimer, Kennth W. Gemmill Professor of Law
Dorothy Kronick, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Sophia Z. Lee, Professor of Law and History and Deputy Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School
Zachary Lesser, Professor and Undergraduate Chair of English
Richard Leventhal, Professor of Anthropology
Terri Lipman, Miriam Sterl Endowed Term Professor of Nutrition; Professor of Nursing of Children; Assistant Dean for Community Engagement; Interim Program Director, Pediatric Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program
Ania Loomba, Professor of English
Heather K. Love, Associate Professor of English
Ian Lustick, Professor and Bess W. Heyman Chair of Political Science
Julia Lynch, Associate Professor of Political Science
Luis Moreno-Caballud, Associate Professor of Romance Languages; Graduate Chair in Hispanic Studies
Ann E. Moyer, Associate Professor, Department of History
Projit B. Mukarji, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science, and Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies
Benjamin Nathans, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History
Anne Norton, Professor of Political Science
Brendan O’Leary, Lauder Professor of Political Science
Amy Offner, Assistant Professor of History
Guillermo Ordonez, Associate Professor of Economics
Sarah H. Paoletti, Practice Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Legal Clinic of University of Pennsylvania Law School
Josephine Park, Associate Professor of English
Emilio A. Parrado, Professor and Chair of Sociology and Population Studies Center
Kathy Peiss, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History
Adriana Perez, Assistant Professor of Nursing
Christine Poggi, Professor of History of Art
Jennifer Flores Sternad Ponce de León, Assistant Professor of English
Gerald Prince, Professor of Romance Languages
Wendell E. Pritchett, Presidential Professor of Law and Education
Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English and Comparative literature
Adolph Reed, Professor of Political Science
John Richetti, A.M. Rosenthal Professor (Emeritus) of English
Timothy Rommen, Professor of Music and Africana Studies
Paul K. Saint-Amour, Professor of English
Melissa E. Sanchez, Associate Professor of English and Core Faculty of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies
Jorge J. Santiago-Aviles, Associate Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE)
Jeffery G. Saven, Professor of Chemistry
Phillip Scott, Professor, Department of Pathobiology
Heather J. Sharkey, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies
Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science
James Sykes, Assistant Professor of Music
Jorge Tellez, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages
Deborah A. Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Term Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Chair
Eve M. Troutt Powell, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History
Domenic Vitiello, Associate Professor of City Planning (Design) and Urban Studies (Arts & Sciences)
David J. Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English
Naomi Waltham-Smith, Assistant Professor of Music
Beth S. Wenger, Moritz and Josephine Berg Chair, Professor of History
Dr. Bethany Wiggin, Associate Professor and Graduate Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures; Affiliated Faculty, Department of English and Program in Comparative Literature; and Director and Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities
Chi-ming Yang, Associate Professor of English