Downtown Talk Explores Immigration Issue

Alister Chapman, professor of history at Westmont, examines how the issue of immigration has caused an immense amount of division worldwide in a talk Thursday, March 28, at 5:30 p.m. at the University Club, 1332 Santa Barbara Street. The Westmont Downtown lecture, “How Immigration Became the Dominant Political Issue of Our World,” is free and open to the public. No tickets are required; the limited seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information, please call (805) 565-6051.

Immigration has become a major political issue in the United States and a significant divide between the two major parties. The same is true in many other countries. “I’ll look at the economic, political and geopolitical reasons why immigration has become so important for contemporary debate, and compare the situation in the United States with that in the rest of the world,” Chapman says. “By providing some historical background, I hope to help us understand not just the immigration question but also the way our world is changing under our feet.”

Chapman, who has been teaching at Westmont since 2004, earned a doctorate from Cambridge University in England, where he was born and raised. His publications include “Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement” (Oxford) and “Civil Religions in Derby” (The Historical Journal, 2016).  He is also the author of The Rest of the Iceberg, a blog that explains the history behind the world we see today. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

The Westmont Downtown lecture series is sponsored by the Westmont Foundation, which also sponsors the annual Westmont President’s Breakfast.