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Supporting DACA Students and Our Nation

Over the Labor Day weekend, I received numerous communications from higher education leaders across the nation, calling on us to urge our elected representatives and policymakers to continue the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and to pursue legislation to create more lasting solutions. Augsburg stands firmly in support of these efforts.

Throughout its nearly 150-year history, Augsburg has always engaged and taught the “students right in front of us.” In the early years, these students were from Norwegian immigrant populations. Over the decades, Augsburg has grown to serve a shifting profile of students of diverse backgrounds and experiences.

In the past 15 years we have had the privilege to meet the so-called “Dreamers,” remarkable young people who grew up in this country because their parents moved here to seek a better life. Our undocumented and DACA students have astounded us with their intellect, their work ethic and perseverance, and their service to our communities.

Since 2012, our DACA students have been able to enhance their education through work and study abroad opportunities — vital educational experiences not available to them before DACA was created. A decision now to curtail DACA would rob these innocent young people of their opportunity for education — a promise we have made to them — and it would rob our country of a generation of immigrant children who, like previous generations of immigrants before them, promise to make our country ever stronger and more vibrant.

We stand with our students, and we offer our resources to advocate for their education and their lives in this country. Our nation will only be strengthened by their talents and by our ability to create a positive, long-term policy solution to support them.

Paul C. Pribbenow

 

Resources for students:

Augsburg Diversity, Inclusion and Equity

Campus Climate and Advisory Team

Services for Undocumented Students

The Fierce Urgency of Now: A Call to the Community

Note: Augsburg President Paul C. Pribbenow issued a statement to the Augsburg community on August 17, 2017, in response to recent events in the United State and the world. His statement is below.

Paul C. PribbenowDear Members of the Augsburg Community,

Events in our country and around the world during the past several months have reminded us that the spectre of fear and prejudice and bigotry are very much present in our common lives. Whether it is violence in the name of white supremacy, rhetoric demonizing immigrants and refugees, policies discriminating against those of various sexual and gender identities, or the general rancor and polarization in our political discourse – all of this illustrates the need for citizens to come together with courage and resolve to fight back, to stand with love against hate and prejudice, to seek opportunities for genuine conversation and common purpose.

The Augsburg community is by no means immune from the dynamics of this volatile social situation. At the same time, however, dedicated and principled work over the past decade by faculty, staff and students has positioned Augsburg to be a model for how a community can navigate the throes of shifting demographics, progressive social mores and the polarizing fear and anxiety that characterize our public lives.  In fact, it is precisely because of Augsburg’s faith, academic and civic traditions that we are poised to show a way forward in the 21st century.

And now is the time for us to lead. As inspiration for the work we must pursue as a community, I have returned to the wise words of Martin Luther King, Jr., who, in his 1963 speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, said “(W)e are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.” Now is the time for urgent reflection and action.

King’s words were prescient:

“…our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform the world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood (sic). Together we must learn to live as (siblings) or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”

In particular, I am struck by Dr. King’s insistence that “…we are challenged to work all over the world with unshakeable determination to wipe out the last vestiges of racism.” Here, fifty years later, we must return to this very challenge, to what King called the need to celebrate our “world house,” comprising black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu – to which we might add, liberal and conservative, urban and rural, straight and gay and more.

The Augsburg community is a microcosm of “the world house.” It is our rare and compelling call to live as a people united by ecumenical loyalties, called to illustrate for all to see how love for one another, what Dr. King called “the supreme unifying principle” claimed by all great world religions, might be the path forward in a world torn to its very core by the forces of hatred, prejudice and violence. The time is now.

Faithfully yours,

Paul C. Pribbenow