Scholar Advocates a More Inclusive Citizenry

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Increasingly, the term "U.S. citizen" fails to include the rights of a large and growing public that includes immigrants and U.S.-born Latina/os, according to Angela Valenzuela, Haskew Centennial Professor at University of Texas at Austin.

Valenzuela will address that phenomenon at the University at Buffalo this month as part of the Graduate School of Education's Charlotte C. Acer Colloquium on Urban Education, begun in 1991.

Her free lecture, "Latino Immigrant Youth and the Right to an Education: Toward a Groundless Post-National Definition of Citizenship," will take place at 4 p.m. Oct. 12 in Room 105 of Harriman Hall on the UB South (Main Street) Campus.

Valenzuela will speak about her work advocating for a "groundless post-national definition of citizenship" that is obtained through "a reinvigorated human rights discourse" on cultural citizenship. While democracy and democratic principles resonate deeply within Americans as a public, Valenzuela contends that this very discourse is misaligned to the rights of immigrants and U.S. born Latina/os.

The Charlotte C. Acer Fund of the UB Graduate School of Education was endowed by Acer, a 1987 graduate of UB with a doctorate in education, to facilitate informative and provocative lectures, discussions and analyses that address complex issues in urban education.