Dissecting Discrimination

Gerard Aching is Professor of Africana and Romance Studies. He specializes in 19th- and 20th-century Caribbean literatures and intellectual histories; theories of modernism and modernity in Latin America; and the relationship among literature, philosophy, and slavery in the Caribbean and the United States. Professor Aching is the author of three books related to his areas of interest; his current research and teaching focus on subjectivity in slave narratives, slavery and philosophy, and sugar production in the development of the modern transatlantic world. His Underground Railroad Research Project, which entails field work in Central and Western New York, informs his new book project, “The Promise of Rebirth: A Contemporary Approach to the Underground Railroad.” Professor Aching is also a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and co-director of Cornell’s Rural Humanities Initiative.

Michael I. Kotlikoff, Professor of Molecular Physiology, became the 16th Provost of Cornell on August 1, 2015. As the university’s Chief Academic Officer, Chief Budgeting Officer, and First Deputy Officer to the President, Dr. Kotlikoff works to enhance the university’s excellence in teaching, scholarship, and outreach. His signature initiative, Radical Collaboration, recruits faculty and supports infrastructure in seven key multidisciplinary areas: nanoscale science and microsystems engineering; genome biology; data science; sustainability; digital agriculture; infection biology; and the critical inquiry into values, imagination, and culture (CIVIC). Dr. Kotlikoff was previously the Austin O. Hooey Dean of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell, where he enhanced programs in education, animal healthcare, and research, and launched an $87 million capital project to upgrade infrastructure and teaching facilities, thus enabling an increase in the pre-clinical class size. His research laboratory, continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for over 30 years, is internationally recognized in the area of cardiovascular biology and heart repair.

Shannon Gleeson is the Edmund Ezra Day Professor and Chair of the Department of Labor Relations, Law, and History at the Cornell University ILR School, as well as a professor by courtesy in the Department of Sociology. Her research and teaching focus on projects that examine the implementation of immigrant worker rights as well as the interdisciplinary study of the forces that shape migration flows and migrant experiences. Dr. Gleeson is also engaged in various collaborative projects that examine the implementation of immigrant worker rights. 

Dr. Gleeson is the author of five books based on her work; the most recent is “Accountability Across Borders: Migrant Rights in North America” (University of Texas Press, 2019, edited with Xóchitl Bada). Dr. Gleeson holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously on the faculty of the Latin American and Latino Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Stephen Yale-Loehr is Professor of Immigration Practice at Cornell Law School and of counsel at Miller Mayer in Ithaca, New York. He also directs the Immigration Law and Policy Center at Cornell Law and is a faculty fellow for the Cornell Migrations initiative as well as a non-resident fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. Professor Yale-Loehr has practiced immigration law for over 35 years and is co-author of the leading immigration law treatise “Immigration Law and Procedure,” published by LexisNexis, as well as the co-author or editor of many other books. He is a national expert on immigration law and has often testified before Congress. Professor Yale-Loehr received his Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and his Juris Doctor degree from Cornell Law School.

Wendy Wolford is the Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, as well as Vice Provost for International Affairs. Her research includes work on international development, land use and distribution, social mobilization, agrarian societies, and critical ethnography. Since 2010, Dr. Wolford has served as the Faculty Director for Economic Development at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, where she co-led CARE-Cornell and Oxfam-Cornell collaborations. She was also co-leader of a three-year theme project on contested global landscapes at Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences. As Cornell’s Vice Provost for International Affairs, Dr. Wolford focuses on strengthening the university’s many global connections and interdisciplinary initiatives, including the Migrations Grand Challenge. She holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in economics and international development from McGill University.