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In 2015, Pope Francis called on every parish in Europe to host a refugee family. Inspired by his call, Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR) calls on colleges and universities to do the same - to provide newly arriving refugees with temporary free housing, access to campus facilities and amenities, and support from campus and community members. With chapters at 20 colleges and universities across the country, ECAR is building an innovative movement of welcome and inclusion in higher education. In this talk, second-generation Palestinian refugee, Professor of English, and founding director of Every Campus A Refuge, Diya Abdo, explores how and why this initiative started and why higher education can no longer afford to ignore its responsibility to our newest Americans. 

Diya Abdo is the Lincoln Financial Professor of English at Guilford College in North Carolina. Her teaching, research, and scholarship focus on Arab women writers, Arab and Islamic feminisms, and refugee studies. She has also published poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her book American Refuge: True Stories of the Refugee Experience was selected as a North Carolina 2024 Reads Book. She has been awarded an Emerson Collective Fellowship (2024) and has received the J. M. Kaplan Fund Innovation Prize (2021) for her work building a movement of welcoming campuses.