Friday, November 17th, 2006
at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum
of Maryland African American History & Culture

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

The Baltimore Immigration Summit is an annual one-day event, co-sponsored by Towson University and the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office, which brings together academics, service providers, activists, community leaders, and others working with and for immigrants in our region. Baltimore is an area with a growing and diverse immigrant population, as well as local government that views immigrants as an important part of the city’s resurgence.

The theme of this year’s Summit is “Building Bridges.” The topic of immigration is often approached from a divisive, “us vs. them” perspective. Yet immigrants’ lives personify the concept of building bridges, as they traverse national boundaries, and continue to make connections between their native and adopted cultures. Bridges are needed among immigrant groups, as well as between immigrants and the native-born. In the city of Baltimore and elsewhere, there is particular concern about building bridges between immigrants and African Americans, as too often the two groups are pitted against each other. In addition, the Summit’s mission is to build bridges between and among those in the academic, non-profit, governmental, and activist communities.

To further those goals, this year for the first time we are issuing a call for presentations for the Baltimore Immigration Summit. We encourage proposals for full panels, but will also accept proposals for individual presentations that could be parts of panels. Proposals should in some way engage the theme of “Building Bridges.”

We encourage activists, scholars, practitioners, government representatives, community leaders, and others to submit proposals. Preference will be given to panel proposals that include representatives of more than one of these groups, and/or that include representatives of various immigrant and native communities. For example, a panel on immigrants and education could include a teacher, a researcher, a student, and a representative of a non-profit agency helping to improve educational opportunities for immigrants, or a panel on immigrant organizations could include representatives of three or four different immigrant communities. If you are interested in presenting, but do not have contacts to put together a panel, the Summit Planning Committee would be happy to try to help you get in touch with others in your area of interest. Please contact us at immigrationsummit@towson.edu.

Panel discussions will be one hour long, and some of that time should be devoted to discussion. Panels should include two to four participants, allowing for 10 – 20 minute presentations for each participant.

For your proposal, please include the following: