In the Family-Separation Debate, Some Professors Say Their Role Is ‘Not to Not Respond’

Jimmy C. Patiño Jr. is used to discussing difficult topics with students.

Patiño, an associate professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, does research that focuses on racial and ethnic studies, so sensitive subjects often come up in class.

But the debate over the now-halted policy from President Trump that had separated about 2,300 children from their parents when crossing the U.S-Mexico border is different, he said.

“It’s heightened right now. Students, particularly of migrant backgrounds, are either really angry or really afraid,” Patiño said, “or both.”

So he expects his class on immigration and the Latino experience, which he’ll teach this fall for the first time since Trump’s election, to be a challenging experience, for his students and for him.

It’s a tough subject that faculty members across America — particularly those who, like Patiño, teach ethnic studies — will grapple with as they plan their fall syllabi. But it’s a teaching moment where the exact formula for classroom success isn’t always evident.

“A lot of the class will be spent kind of processing what’s happening now and trying to understand the ins and outs of it,” Patiño said. “That’s just an added emotional toll, some more emotional labor that we’ll be doing together in the classroom.”

He’s spending this summer talking with colleagues about how to broach the topic of family separation with students in a manner that’s both intellectual and respectful.

Patiño is particularly conscious of including voices from his students, some of whom are undocumented immigrants. It’s important, he said, to ensure that the classroom is a space where students of all legal statuses can be a part of the national conversation.

Meanwhile, Patiño has been working on his academic writing, he said. It’s a way for him to gain “my own agency” by processing current events.

“It gives me ideas about how I can disseminate that information, whether it’s in the classroom or in the community, to try to be helpful in the moment,” Patiño said, “because it’s a challenging moment.”

The “push-pull” between academic and activist work can be a fine balance to strike, said Kristina Lovato, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work at California State University at Long Beach.

“I’d really love to spend more time getting involved with social-service organizations and doing more hands-on work,” Lovato said. “But I know that the research needs to be done as well, the knowledge needs to be produced, and people need to have access to written work that documents the issues that are going on today.”

Doing Something

Miguel Zavala, an associate professor in the college of education at Chapman University, in California, just knows he has to do something.

“My role is not,” Zavala said, “to not respond.”

Zavala is planning a series of lectures at a local community center — at least one of which will focus on immigration — and will host a fund raiser at his home for a nonprofit organization helping families affected by policy at the border. In July, he’ll continue his summer tradition of teaching migrant farmworker high-school students in the Orange County area.

That work, Zavala said, is all the more relevant given that the students he’ll work with are probably dealing with family-separation issues firsthand.

He’s also redesigning his fall courses to focus more heavily on immigration issues. Zavala said he’ll spend the summer asking himself, “As a teacher educator, how do I bring those voices and perspectives to immigrant families?”

Those conversations, while difficult, often spark student interest in ethnic studies, said Gilda L. Ochoa, a professor of Chicana/o Latina/o studies at Pomona College who teaches classes in Latina/o education.

“This is kind of what drives them to be in a class about Latinos and education,” Ochoa said of her students. “They see the significance and the importance of educators to be aware, to know what are the crucial issues affecting our community and what can they do to better serve and work with Latino/Latina communities in their classrooms and with families.”

Student Engagement

Laura E. Enríquez, a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of California at Irvine, said capitalizing on that student engagement is key.

Last winter, she was teaching a class on the experiences of undocumented immigrants as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was facing rescission. She made a practice of updating her students on the latest announcements on DACA — a federal program that protects students who were brought into the country illegally as children from deportation — and asked them to produce, in groups, projects that explored public perceptions of undocumented immigrants. One group of students led a march on campus advocating the passage of a “clean Dream Act,” while others created art projects or short stories that Enríquez displayed.

Enríquez is reflecting on that experience as she prepares to teach a graduate course on undocumented migration this fall. To do so, she’ll eschew asking her students to read theoretical texts in favor of assigning media coverage of family-separation issues. The class’s final project, she expects, will take the form of public engagement such as an op-ed article.

The class will be “emotionally heavy,” Enríquez said.

“The emotional weight is exhausting and draining,” Enríquez said. “Finding a way to engage with those emotions, but in a way that isn’t demoralizing and defeating — I’m trying to figure out what that’s going to look like.”

That’s a challenge for Enríquez, whose 3-year-old daughter makes the prospect of family separation personally resonant for her, she said. In front of her classes, she hopes to find a way to “let some of the walls down.”

“Making sure they don’t come all the way down, I think, is the hard part.”

Correction (6/27/2018, 6:38 p.m.): One of the professors quoted in this article was misidentified. The Chronicle spoke to Laura E. Enríquez, a professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of California at Irvine, not Laura J. Enríquez, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. The article has been corrected.

Correction (6/28/2018, 3:59 p.m.): This article originally misstated Professor Patiño’s rank. He is an associate professor, not an assistant professor. The article has been updated accordingly.