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Peace Week Talk | Feb. 8
Pulitzer Winner Sonia Nazario to Discuss Enrique's Journey
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and humanitarian Sonia Nazario will speak at Friends Seminary on Thursday, February 8 from 6-7:30 PM in the Fifteenth Street Meetinghouse. Her evening lecture is the keynote address during the School’s 2018 Peace Week celebration, which is an annual exploration of the fundamental Quaker testimony of peace. Peace Week 2018 centers around the school’s year-long theme, “Seeking Refuge: the Ethics and Politics of Migration and Immigration.” In her talk, entitled “Enrique’s Journey and America’s Immigration Dilemma,” she’ll discuss her series of reports for The Los Angeles Times following a Honduran boy’s journey to the United States in an effort to reunite with his mother, who had made the journey 11 years earlier. Her work earned the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the George Polk Award for International Reporting. In book form, Enrique’s Journey later became a national bestseller.
Her talk at Friends will also address her more recent work for The New York Times around the detention of unaccompanied immigrant children at the border. Nazario returned to Honduras in 2014, when a national crisis erupted over the detention of these children. In her piece for The Times, she detailed the violence causing the exodus and argued that it was a refugee crisis, not an immigration crisis. Her story garnered global attention and prompted an invitation to address the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
At a time when America is embroiled in a national debate on immigration that will shape the country’s future, Nazario argues that our country needs a new approach that addresses key “push” factors that propel migrants, especially women and children, to leave their homelands. She argues that instead of spending billions on walls that don’t work, the U.S. must improve conditions in four countries that send 74% of migrants who come to the U.S. illegally by increasing aide to help improve education for girls, lowering birth rates; promoting micro-loans to help women start job-generating businesses; and gear trade policies to give clear preference to goods from these four countries.
A fluent Spanish speaker of Jewish ancestry whose personal history includes living in Argentina during the so-called “dirty war,” Nazario is a passionate and dynamic speaker. Her humanitarian efforts led to Nazario’s selection as recipient of the Don and Arvonne Fraser Human Rights Award from the Advocates for Human Rights in 2015. In 2016, the American Immigration Council presented her with the American Heritage Award, and the Houston Peace and Justice Center honored her with its National Peacemaker Award. A graduate of Williams College, Nazario has a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the U.C. Berkeley. She has served on many boards, including the board of Kids In Need of Defense, a nonprofit that provides pro bono attorneys to unaccompanied immigrant children.
This event is free and open to the public. Copies of Enrique's Journey will be available for purchase from 5:30-6 PM prior to the lecture.
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2006
Previous Peace Week Themes and Speakers
2017
The New America: Listening Across the Divides | George Packer
The New America: Listening Across the Divides | George Packer
2016
Let Your Life Speak | Chelsea Clinton
2015
A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunities | Nicholas Kristof and Maro Chermayeff
2014
Legacies of Peace: Choosing to Use the Gift of our Lives to Make the World a Better Place | Maggie Doyne, Neil Blumenthal ‘98 and Dr. Oliver Rothschild ‘98
2013
Building Bridges: Peace Through Understanding | Teri McLuhan
2012
Peace Like a River: Water as Matter and Metaphor | Michael Arad
2011
Educating for Peace: Friends Seminary and 225 Years of Quaker Education | Steve Emerson Irene McHenry Bruce Stewart
2010
Beyond the Numbers: The Economics of Peace | Jeffrey Sachs
2009
In the Presence of Justice: The Politics of Peace | Mary Robinson
2008
War Letters: Both Said and Sung | Ethan Hawke, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Palmedo and Crystal Sikora
2007
Environmental Stewardship – A Pathway to Peace | James Turrell
2006
Nonviolence in the Age of Terrorism | Arun Gandhi
2005
The Diplomat, the Activist and the Academic | Pierre Schori, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Tuchman Mathews
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Friends Seminary — the oldest continuously operated, coeducational school in NYC — serves college-bound day students in Kindergarten-Grade 12.
