We invite Yale, MIT, and Princeton alums to join us for the Los Angeles High Table series aimed at showcasing dynamic speakers in an intimate setting. We especially welcome established alums in fields relevant to the talk and younger alums in all fields. This in-person event features UCLA professor and Yale alum Hiroshi Motomura who will discuss the history of immigration in the United States, how Americans' views of immigrants has changed as the primary countries of origin have shifted, and how this plays into today's vexing policy questions.

Date: Sunday, October 9th
Time: 10:45am PDT – 1:15pm PDT
Location: The event will take place at Kenneth Hahn State Park at one of the covered picnic shelters off the main parking lot. Exact directions will be sent once we claim our spot the morning of the event. Feel free to bring a blanket or folding chair to guarantee a place to sit.
Price: $5. We also request you contribute something to share for brunch.
Event format: 30 min mingling, 60 min High Table Program featuring Professor Hiroshi Motomura, 60 min networking and discussion post-talk with potluck refreshments
Registration: Visit the MIT Club of Southern California website, or click on the link below. Space is limited, so register early and be sure to attend!

About the speaker:

Hiroshi Motomura's work focuses on immigration and citizenship. This choice of topic was influenced by his childhood experiences: he moved to the United States from Japan when he was just three years old,"stateless" in the eyes of the law -- he became a U.S. citizen at age 15. Professor Motomura received his BA from Yale University in 1974 and his JD from UC Berkeley in 1978. He was a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado, Boulder before joining the UCLA faculy in 2008. He currently serves at the Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law and the Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

Professor Motomura has written extensively on immigration and citizenship law. His award-winning books include "Americans in Waiting" (2006), which discusses how the relationship between immigration and citizenship has changed throughout American history and is on the U.S. Department of State's Suggested Reading List for Foreign Service Officers. He tackles the subject of unauthorized migration in 2015 PROSE Award winner "Immigration Outside the Law" (2014). Professor Motomura won a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship that is supporting work on his upcoming book, "The New Migration Law," which will connect several of today's most vexing immigration policy questions.

Professor Motomura has won numerous awards for his teaching, which focuses on immigration law and immigrants' rights. His honors include the 1977 President's Teaching Scholar, which is the highest possible teaching award at the University of Colorado and the 2008 Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction at the University of North Carolina. His teaching style was one of 26 profiled for the 2016 book "What the Best Law Teachers Do" in which one of his former students commented “His work has saved lives.” Most recently, he won the Rutter Award for Teaching Excellence from UCLA in 2021.

Professor Motomura's expertise on immigration topics is highly sought after. He served on the board of directors of the National Immigration Law Center from 2011-2020 and has testified several times before the US Congress. He served as an outside adviser to the Obama-Biden Transition Team's Working Group on Immigration Policy and on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration.

Parking: Parking is $7 in Kenneth Hahn State Park. Free parking (with a 20 minute walk) is available at the Stoneview Nature Center on the opposite side of the Park to Playa Bridge.

Questions?
For questions concerning registration for the upcoming High Table event, contact Jon at la.hightable.reg at gmail.com.

For all other inquiries (speaking at or hosting a future High Table event, helping to organize future events, etc.) write to Seth at la.hightable at gmail.com.