Alumni Blog

When President Donald Trump issued an executive order attempting to prevent travel to the United States from seven majority-Muslim nations, Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued, eventually winning an injunction on the most controversial elements of the proposed law. Overnight, the little-known attorney general with deep roots in Washington state became a standard bearer of the “resistance.”

When Trump issued the travel ban, it “really pissed me off,” Ferguson said in a September Crosscut piece. But he said he wasn’t surprised. His office had taken scrupulous note of the candidate’s campaign rhetoric, and they were holding weekly meetings to discuss the new administration, anticipating — correctly, it turns out — some kind of constitutional controversy.

Ferguson did it again last September, when he led Washington in joining 14 other states and the District of Columbia in another lawsuit against Trump, this time challenging his repeal of an Obama-era immigration policy. The program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, provides legal status to almost one million immigrants who arrived here as children. Ferguson also sued hotel chain Motel 6 after it admitted to providing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents with guests’ private information. To date, Ferguson has filed 19 lawsuits against the Trump administration, with five successful and 14 pending.

On Feb. 3, Bob Ferguson will speak at the Crosscut Festival, a two-day event that will bring together some of the best minds and biggest names in the Northwest. Rising political star Julián Castro will headline the festival. Also be among the more-than-70 speakers and panelists: former Barack Obama speechwriter David Litt, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, and Zoë Quinn, the video game designer who was targeted during Gamergate.

For a full schedule of events, and to buy tickets, go to www.crosscut.com/festival.

JOIN US AT THE CROSSCUT FESTIVAL

The Festival, to be held at Seattle University, will put elected officials, business leaders, and cultural luminaries onstage with journalists from more than a dozen news organizations from around the region. It’s the Northwest’s answer to the New Yorker Festival or the Aspen Ideas Festival. We expect 1,500 people to attend, including hundreds of Washington college students.

Bob Ferguson will be part of a panel that discusses the future for DACA recipients during this tumultuous political time, along with Carlos Rodriguez, former Seattle U student body president and undocumented immigrant. The panel will be moderated by Crosscut Staff Writer Lilly Fowler.

Other panels in the track on race and social justice will explore police use of deadly force, reparations, sex and consent on campus, gentrification, and education equity.

Special thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation, and all of our other sponsors for making the event possible. The Northwest has been hungry for a gathering like this. We anticipate that it will become an annual happening that you will not want to miss.

From the entire team at Crosscut, we hope you’ll join us!

Online sales have now ended, but tickets will be available at the door.

By: Mason Bryan

The Catholic Heritage Lectures began eight years ago as a platform to discuss topics relevant to Catholics and society at large. Now the lecture series is housed under Seattle University’s Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, with the series focusing on a different theme each year.  This year’s Catholic Heritage Lectures’ theme is “That We May Be One: Racial Justice and the Catholic Church.”

Following the fall lecture, which explored the racial divide within the Catholic Church, the winter quarter lecture brings together diverse panelists who will examine “American Catholicism, Xenophobia and Immigration.” The topic opens up conversation about xenophobia and the history of Catholic immigration to the United States. The panelists will explore both the Catholic Church’s rich theological and spiritual teaching to welcome the stranger, as well as its complicity as institution and community in xenophobia. We sat down with Dr. Catherine Punsalan-Manlimos, director of the Institute of Catholic Thought and Culture, to get a deeper look at this year’s topic and its relevance to the Catholic community.

“We plan the lecture themselves at last a year in advance and try to get a sense of salient social issues that are surfacing both on campus and in our country. With the rise in discourse around the Black Lives Matter Movement, immigration, and troubling attitudes towards Islam, it just seemed important for us to engage the issue of racial justice in the Catholic Church,” Catherine said. “The Church has had something to say about this issue so we want to see what that is, while acknowledging that the Catholic Church has much work to do. There’s just so much to address with this topic. For example, how xenophobia exists in the church, and how Catholics have been victims of xenophobia and the important role the Catholic Church has played in fighting for the rights of immigrants; these topics are very close to the heart of Pope Francis.”

The panelists for this winter’s lecture include:

Dr. Laurie Cassidy, PhD, is a theologian and spiritual director who explores how Christian mysticism can be a resource for personal and social transformation, and what it means to be a Catholic of Irish descent exploring issues of whiteness.

Dr. Arturo Chavez, PhD, is the president of the Mexican American Catholic College in San Antonio Texas, and is nationally recognized for his efforts to combat racism and poverty.

Dr. Catherine Punsalan-Manlimos will frame and facilitate the evening.

When asked what she hoped people would take away from the lecture, Catherine said, “The understanding that whoever we are, unless we are indigenous to this land or descendants of enslaved people brought here against their will, we share something in common with new immigrants ­– stories of migration. The fear of the stranger, the one who is different, is part of the history of this country since its colonization. We can’t assume we know who the newly arrived immigrant is based on the color of their skin. The evening will be an opportunity for people to understand the complexities of this country’s immigration narratives and learn about the resources within the Catholic tradition that remind us the call ‘to welcome the strangers because we were once strangers on this land.’”

You can learn more about the winter lecture here. This lecture is free and open to everyone in the community, even if you have not attended previous ICTC lectures in the series.

American Catholicism, Xenophobia and Immigration
Thursday, February 22, 2018
7 p.m.
Pigott Auditorium