Today there are more than 65 million people displaced around the world-- the largest number in recorded history. But rather than call this a “migrant crisis,” we call it a crisis of humanity. It is a crisis rooted in geopolitics, not random, isolated incidents. The global response has lacked self-reflection, empathy, and sustainable solutions. Instead, it has focused on walls, borders, and ways of keeping people out. In this talk, Letitia Basford, a professor from Hamline University, and Sejla Ceric, a Hamline student and daughter of Bosnian refugees, will discuss why the crisis is occurring and what can be done to re-instill humanity to the situation.

Letitia Basford is an Education professor at Hamline University. Sejla Ceric is a senior at Hamline studying Political Science and Global Studies. During the fall of 2018, Letitia took Sejla and her 16 other Hamline university students to Europe to study how the continent has been responding to the millions of migrants who have fled their countries for Europe after war erupted in Syria in 2011.

Lead Videographer: Autumn Vagle
Assistant Videographers: Emma Larson, Anna Heckmann
Introductory Graphic: Jackson Cobb
Letitia Basford is an associate professor of Teacher Education at Hamline University. Her teaching and research interests focus on students’ equitable access to education, with a focus on culturally responsive pedagogy and restorative school practices. Her research spans from capturing the experiences of Somali and Hmong youth in culturally specific charter schools, to documenting a family’s experience school-to-prison-pipeline, to investigating how schools are working to prevent that pipeline and be more inclusive places through culturally sustaining practices.

Sejla Ceric is a double-major in political science and global studies at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She holds a position as Vice President of Hamline’s Model United Nations program. Sejla also spent a semester abroad at the University of York in the UK studying politics and international relations including a course on immigration in Europe. She is motivated by her own family’s past as refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx