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 at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and the chairperson of ILR’s Department of Global Labor and Work. She also serves as a teaching faculty member in Latina/o Studies and American Studies programs in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences and is a professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.

A sociologist who studies migrant worker rights and immigration policy, Professor Gleeson is engaged in various collaborative projects that examine immigrant workers. She is particularly interested in how worker rights policies are implemented on the ground as well as how workers, unions, worker centers and other NGOs navigate the policies that impact precarious workers, especially the 8 million U.S. workers who are undocumented.

Professor Gleeson has co-authored five books and monographs, including the book “Scaling Migrant Worker Rights: How Advocates Collaborate and Contest State Power,” which won the 2024 Best Book Award by the American Political Science Association Latino Caucus.

Professor Gleeson earned a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of California, Berkeley.

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 Vice Provost for International Affairs and the Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. As vice provost, Professor Wolford supports Cornell’s international community and leads efforts to strengthen the university’s global connections and interdisciplinary initiatives.

Under Professor Wolford’s leadership, Cornell has created Global Hubs partnerships, Global Grand Challenges, and increased support for Scholars Under Threat. Her research spans land governance, social movements, agrarian studies, and political ecology, with long-term work in Brazil, Ecuador, and Mozambique.