Celebrating the Harney Program’s Transformational Director, Prof. Jeffrey Reitz

This was a celebration of the Harney Program’s Director from 1999 to 2021, Professor Jeffrey Reitz! The morning included an all-star panel featuring three of Jeff’s former doctoral students, Professors Rupa Banerjee, Emily Laxer, and Wendell Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey; a keynote address by Professor Richard Alba, and a short address by Professor Reitz.

 

 

08:00 AM - 08:45 AM: Breakfast

08:45 AM - 09:00 AM: Welcoming remarks from Prof. Phil Triadafilopoulos

09:00 AM - 10:30 AM: Panel featuring Professors Rupa Banerjee, Emily Laxer, and Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM  Coffee Break

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM  Keynote address by Professor Richard Alba

12:30 AM - 12:45 PM  Remarks by Jeffrey Reitz

12:45 AM - 02:00 PM  Lunch Reception

 

 

The seeds of Richard Alba’s interest in ethnicity were sown during his childhood in the Bronx of the 1940s and 1950s and nurtured intellectually at Columbia University, where he received his undergraduate and graduate education, completing his Ph.D. in 1974. He was distinguished professor of sociology at the University at Albany, CUNY, until coming to the Graduate Center in September 2008. He is also on the staff of the GC’s Center for Urban Research and was its acting director during the 2011–12 school year. Increasingly, his teaching and research have taken on a comparative focus, encompassing the immigration societies of North America and Western Europe. He has carried out research in France and in Germany, with the support of Fulbright grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Russell Sage Foundation. In 2003–04, he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. His research has also received grant support from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. His latest books are The Next Generation: Immigrant Youth in a Comparative Perspective (2011), coedited with Mary Waters, and Blurring the Color Line: The New Chance for a More Integrated America (2009). His books include Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (1990); Italian Americans: Into the Twilight of Ethnicity (1985); and, most recently, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration (2003), cowritten with Victor Nee. He has been elected president of the Eastern Sociological Society and vice president of the American Sociological Association

 

Jeffrey G. Reitz (Ph.D., FRSC) is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, and R.F. Harney Professor Emeritus of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies.  He has published extensively on immigration and inter-group relations in Canada from comparative perspectives and has frequently contributed to discussions of policies on immigration, multiculturalism, and minority group employment in Canada.  He is the co-author of Multiculturalism and Social Cohesion: Potentials and Challenges of Diversity (2009); recent articles have appeared in the International Migration Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Social Science Research.  Professor Reitz served as Chair in the University of Toronto’s Department of Sociology from 1980-1985, and he contributed for many years at the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management.  From 1999-2020, he was R.F. Harney Professor and Director of the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program, and in 2002 brought the program to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.  In 2000-2001 he was the Mackenzie King Visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Harvard University, and he has been visiting professor or visiting scholar at other universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, and Mexico.  During 2012-2014 he was Marie Curie International Fellow at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, and 2017-2018 he was Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the City University of New York Graduate Centre.  He is a Research Fellow with the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal.

 

Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) is William Dawson Chair, Assistant Professor, and specialist in post-Reconstruction U.S. and African Diaspora history at McGill University. He is the author of Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America (UNC Press). He is working on two new book projects. The first examines nineteenth-century African-led abolitionism and warfare along the Gulf of Guinea Coast. The second interrogates the roots of counterinsurgency in the United States and the Americas broadly from the 1870s to the 1970s. Adjetey is the back-to-back recipient of McGill's two teaching commendations: 2023 Principal's Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and 2022 H. Noel Fieldhouse Award for Distinguished Teaching. He earned his Honours B.A. from the University of Toronto (St. Michael's College), and an M.A. in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies and Political Science, also at U of T. He earned his Ph.D., M.A., and M.Phil. from Yale University. Before pursuing an academic career, Adjetey worked in youth gang prevention and intervention in north Toronto.

 

Rupa Banerjee is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Canadian Research Chair of Economic Inclusion, Employment and Entrepreneurship of Canada’s Immigrants. Her research examines employment outcomes of newcomers, a topic on which she has published extensively. Her research interests also include diversity and ethno-racial discrimination in the workplace. Dr. Banerjee’s current program of research focuses on the role of post-secondary institutions and employers on the migration and labour market integration of temporary residents and immigrants in Canada. Dr. Banerjee’s research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and has appeared in leading journals in the fields of immigration and labour.  Her work has contributed to the awareness of implicit bias in hiring practices and the development of a digital app that facilitates newcomer access to information and resources for settlement in Canada.

 

Emily Laxer is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University’s Glendon Campus, where she holds a York Research Chair in Populism, Rights, and Legality. Dr. Laxer’s research has addressed both the political underpinnings and community-based effects of state policies concerning minorities’ citizenship, rights, and belonging. This research has had particular implications for understanding debates over restricting Islamic religious signs in comparative societies. International in scope, it has been published in English and French in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of immigration, nationalism, and politics. This research also forms the basis of a sole-authored monograph, Unveiling the Nation: The Politics of Secularism in France and Québec, which received the John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award from the Canadian Sociological Association in 2020. Dr. Laxer’s current research program explores the relationship between contemporary populist political movements and articulations of rights and legality in Canada.