Observer supports Cárdenas
EDITORIAL
The contents of America's melting pot are changing.
Today, one in 10 Americans is foreign-born, and those who immigrate to the U.S. are more likely to arrive from Latin America than from anywhere else in the world.
America's 10.7 million Hispanics comprise its largest group of foreign-born residents, and the population continues to grow. In fact, the number of foreign-born Hispanics rose 34 percent from 1990 to 1998.
As the demographics of our country change, we are faced with challenges of communication that surpass language barriers. We must endeavor to understand the cultural differences our neighbors from Latin America bring to the U.S. as they arrive from many countries, each with its own unique heritage.
By hiring Gilberto Cárdenas, establishing the Institute for Latino Studies and hosting the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, Notre Dame has taken a commendable step toward increasing students' awareness of our nation's changing composition.
By dedicating financial and physical resources to this study, the University has provided an avenue for students and teachers to further understand the relationship between Latinos and American Catholicism, social work, family life and capitalism.
We applaud these efforts.
Cárdenas, in a guest column in The Observer, invited students to help develop programs and courses the Institute will offer. He stressed that the Institute exists for everyone, not just for Latino students.
We support Cárdenas in this invitation and further extend the call to the University community. The Latino influence in America is not limited to one sphere of society but has an impact on every facet of U.S. culture.
Thus, we encourage students and teachers of business, physical sciences, architecture, law, languages, literature and social sciences to explore how their fields are touched — directly and indirectly — by Latino influences.
We ask them to meet with representatives of the Institute to discuss how to create and implement programs that will match educational needs they discover within their disciplines.
We encourage Notre Dame students, faculty and administrators to use the resources at hand to broaden fields of study across the entire University. In doing so, this community's members will be better equipped to serve and live in a diverse and ever-changing world.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, October 11, 1999
