The Borders of Belonging

Join us for a conversation on exploring how ideas of citizenship, assimilation, and belonging have shaped the nation's past and continue to influence debates about identity, inclusion, and community today. This event will feature scholars Yoosun Park and Michael Reisch in dialogue, moderated by Ben Jealous and with introductory remarks by Dean Sara S. Bachman. Presented with the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) and the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania.

This event is part of America at 250: Where Do We Go From Here?, the annual University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2) speaker series. This year's series comprises four events, all moderated by Ben Jealous, Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. It is co-sponsored by the Andrea Mitchell Center, continuing the partnership established last year on the Politics of Well-Being series.

Learn More about America At 250 : Where Do We Go From Here?

Speaker Biographies

Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD

Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD is a theory-driven scholar whose research and pedagogy are predicated on the belief that social work’s commitment to social justice requires not only a diversity of social identities but of perspective on and approach to knowledge-building. To this end, she has built an interdisciplinary and non-traditional body of scholarship that utilizes critical theories and methodologies to significantly extend the borders of social work knowledge. Framed within the broad substantive area of critical discourse studies, she has pursued two distinct but overlapping lines of inquiry that interrogate and elucidate each other: 1) an interrogation of social work’s history with racialized populations (particularly immigrants and immigration) and the processes of racialization; and 2) the study of the ways in which that history manifests in social work research, education, and practice today. As required readings in a variety of courses across schools of social work in the United States and abroad, Dr. Park’s award-winning scholarship informs the education of the next generation of social work practitioners and researchers.

Michael Reisch

Michael Reisch is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland. A former Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Fulbright Scholar, he has held faculty positions at five other major American universities and visiting professorships in Australia, Bulgaria, and China. Reisch is the author or editor of 40 books and monographs on social policy, the history and philosophy of social welfare and social work, theories of social justice, and professional ethics. He has also lectured and presented across Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin America. In addition, Reisch has led local, statewide, and national advocacy and social justice organizations and directed or consulted on political campaigns in four states. He has been honored by the Maryland General Assembly, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and several universities and social change organizations. He is the recipient of the Significant Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Social Work Education, the Career Achievement Award from the Association for Community Organization and Social Action, and has been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare.  His most recent publication, co-authored with Dr. Yoosun Park, is Social Work, the Americanization Movement, and the Construction of Americans, 1874-1930.

Ben Jealous 

Ben Jealous is a Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching social entrepreneurship, social innovation, and criminal justice reform. His course, Leading Social Change, maps three paths to large-scale change: building companies that change the world, passing laws, and running for office. He has done all three. He was the youngest President and CEO in the history of the NAACP. There he built coalitions across party lines that helped end the death penalty in four states in five years and won criminal-justice reform in states from Texas to Georgia. He later spent five years as a partner at Kapor Capital, backing more than thirty seed-stage founders, then opened his own investment office in Baltimore. In 2018 he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Maryland. His first teacher was his grandmother, Mamie Bland Todd, a 1953 graduate of Penn's School of Social Work, now the School of Social Policy & Practice. His most recent book, Never Forget Our People Were Always Free, was SP2's One Book in 2023. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds degrees from Columbia and Oxford.