{"id":417232,"date":"2020-02-21T15:44:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-21T20:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=417232"},"modified":"2020-02-21T15:45:25","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T20:45:25","slug":"how-can-understanding-stories-help-in-the-american-border-crisis-417232","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/how-can-understanding-stories-help-in-the-american-border-crisis-417232\/","title":{"rendered":"How can understanding stories help in the American border crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Growing up in El Paso, Texas, Ruben Flores didn\u2019t think of the US and Mexico as different countries. \u201cI knew it, intellectually,\u201d he says, but as someone with family on each side of the border, his personal connection with both places made them inseparable in his mind.<\/p>\n
Today Flores is a comparative historian, and he has devoted his professional life to exploring their relationship. The focus of his research and teaching is intellectual history and the role that ideas\u2014about science, education, philosophy, and government\u2014have played in both countries, in the lives of average people.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can understand why the US and Mexico have historically evolved as they have, then it gives you a better sense of the kind of decision-making that has created these two sister societies sitting side by side,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Flores joined the 做厙勛圖\u2019s<\/a> faculty this year, as an associate professor in the Department of History<\/a>. He received his PhD at Berkeley and is the author of the book Backroad Pragmatists: Mexico\u2019s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States <\/em>(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)<\/a>. It\u2019s a study of how Mexico rebuilt itself following the Mexican Revolution (1910\u20131920), which established a constitutional republic. The violent conflict claimed the lives of up to eight percent of Mexico\u2019s population, double the mortality rate of the Civil War in the United States. Flores also examines in the book how Mexico\u2019s strategies for nation-building influenced the civil rights movement and politics of the US.<\/p>\n Key in Mexico\u2019s efforts was public education, which the country used to knit together its diverse population. Mexico thereby confronted questions pertinent to the US, too: what social value do schools have? How do they contribute to creating a national community? \u201cIntellectually, academically, we\u2019re teaching our students how to become thinkers,\u201d says Flores. \u201cBut when it comes to ethics and the philosophy of society, we wrestle with difference, with culture, and with resources.\u201d<\/p>\n