AUBURN, Ala.—The Auburn University College of Agriculture will launch its 2013-14 E.T. York Distinguished Lecturer series Monday, Sept. 23, when Philip Martin of the University of California, Davis delivers the fall lecture, “Agriculture and Immigration: What’s Next?” Martin will speak at 7 p.m. in the Auburn University Student Center Ballroom.
“Labor and immigration policies are of great importance in the agricultural sector,” said Paul Patterson, the college’s associate dean for instruction and chair of the York Lecturer speaker selection committee. “Alabama has enacted its own immigration laws, and immigration reform has been the topic of recent contentious debate in Washington. It’s a crucially important topic that needs to be discussed by the public and policymakers.”
Martin’s selection as guest speaker also coincides with Auburn’s 2013-14 Common Book program, which features “Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy” by award-winning journalist John Bowe.
Martin is a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis and is editor of Migration News, a publication that summarizes and analyzes the most important immigration and integration developments of the preceding quarter for regions including North America, Europe and Asia. He has served on several federal commissions and testifies frequently before Congress and is an award-winning author who works for UN agencies around the world on labor and migration issues. Martin has also studied the evolving global wine industry.
The York Lecturer series will continue Feb. 25, 2014, with Carl Zimmer as guest speaker. Zimmer is a columnist for The New York Times, where his column, “Matter,” appears each Thursday. In his books, essays, articles, and blog posts, Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. He is a popular speaker at universities, medical schools, museums and festivals, and he is also a guest on radio programs such as “Radiolab” and “This American Life.”
The York Lecturer series is free and open to the public. For more information on the Sept. 23 lecture, contact Megan Ross at 334-833-3201 or mhr0001@auburn.edu.
