The Immigrant Experience in Laredo to Stanford, to Harvard, to Rice

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Ruth Ben-Ghiat: "The Stanford to Harvard to tenure to Rice is not sort of like the default sort of the default academic path of your average person" She says there were several points in her life where she begged God to intervene and he did. In high school, she had to raise money for a summer program at Harvard but they didn't offer financial aid. Her older siblings contributed $1,500 cash so she could make it across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Raise yourself up by your own bootstraps. This is a refrain we hear all the time, especially as Americans catechized in the dogma of personal responsibility. But what if some people don’t have bootstraps? What if some don’t even have boots?

This week David and Curtis welcome educational expert and Rice University sociology professor Ruth López Turley. Raised on the U.S./Mexico border, Ruth’s own educational story is fascinating and lends special weight to her observations about educational equity and how the scriptures (including Mary’s Magnificat) might lead us to some surprising and challenging conclusions.

Show Notes:

-$50M Kinder Foundation grant will expand Kinder Institute’s work to solve challenges facing Houston

-Claire Cain Miller, Josh Katz, Francesca Paris and Aatish Bhatia (The New York Times) - Vast New Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor

-Cynthia M. Allen - Want economic mobility? Make friends at church

Follow Curtis’ work at RedeemingBabel.org

Produced by Kris Carter