How does art make a difference? Students in Raquel Jimenez’s Arts and Cultural Organizing Intensive course at the Harvard School of Education got to see how in a learning experience in Puerto Rico. In Faculty Voices, Jimenez, a lecturer on education and co-chair of the Arts and Learning Concentration at HGSE, and David Guerra, a curator and Harvard Law School alum, discuss the impact of the experience and what Puerto Rico can teach us.

Louis E. Caldera, a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, chaired the Panama Canal Commission the year the Canal was returned to Panama, 1999. He was also the first (and only) Latino to serve as Secretary of the Army. He talks on issues ranging from President Trump's threat to "take back" the Canal to the implications of the ban of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) on the nation's military and security.

As we head into a new era under President Donald Trump, migration and rights are very much in the news, even as we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. Threatened deportations and the end of some existing paths to legal status, as well as the Supreme Court decision against university use of affirmative action, create new challenges. Aitor Bouso Gavín, a lecturer of Latinx Studies at Harvard's Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR) and the faculty coordinator for the Latinx Studies Working Group, discusses the important role of Latinx Studies.

Tomomichi Amano is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Market Unit at Harvard Business School. Recently he's been researching a large Colombian retailer.

In honor of Black History Month, Amber Henry, an assistant professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard, discusses the importance of Black history past and present. An anthropologist of Latin America and the Caribbean, her latest book focuses on San Basilo de Palenque in Colombia, a community founded by runaway formerly enslaved people.

Gabrielle Oliveira, Jorge Paulo Lemann Associate Professor of Education and Brazil Studies at Harvard University, looks ahead at the impact of President Donald J. Trump's hardline immigration policies. Her research focuses on immigration and mobility. She is also part of the group Colectivas Infancias, a group of social researchers and storytellers who present detailed portraits of immigrant children.

Vesall Nourani, an assistant professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, will be teaching a course on Education for Community Development this semester. With a disciplinary background in development economics, he talks about his research on education and development in both Colombia and Uganda,

Ignacio Bunster-Ossa, a design critic in landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design,co-teaches a timely studio course on the Panama Canal with fellow faculty member Anita Berrizbeitia. He talks about the implications of President Donald Trump's threats to take over the Canal, as well as "how a 19th-century symbol of 'ecological triumph' can be transformed into a 21st-century landscape that repairs, reconciles, and reconnects, safeguarding local conditions and aspirations from mounting pressures from ongoing global interests and climate uncertainty."

Are Latinx immigrants and transgender people the canaries in the coal mine for the new Trump administration? Alejandra Caraballo, Esq., a clinical instructor in the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, reflects on future challenges, historical precedents, and what we can do. Before joining Harvard, Caraballo worked as a staff attorney with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, and at the LGBTQ Law Project at New York Legal Assistance Group, where she focused on immigration and family law.

Raúl Zegarra, Assistant Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School, talks about the relationship between faith and politics, as well as surprising trends in today's Catholicism.

Brian D. Farrell, Harvard Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Entomology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, talks about his latest research with mosquitos and other insects.

Marcel Roman is an Assistant Professor of Government at the Department of Government. He specializes in racial and ethnic politics in the United States, with a focus on Latino political behavior, immigration, and policing. In this Faculty Voices, he talks to us about the Latino vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Américo Mendoza-Mori. an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on U.S. Latinx and Indigenous communities, discusses Hispanic Heritage Month in the context of post-affirmative action. Mendoza-Mori is affiliated with Harvard’s Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights and is currently teaching at Northeastern University.

Chris Lombardo, Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard, is very active in the Harvard University Chapter of Engineers without Borders. He just came back from a trip to Los Sanchez Water Supply Project in the Dominican Republic, where he has been working for more than a decade.

Noreen Tuross, Landon T. Clay Research Professor of Scientific Archaeology at Harvard's Department of Evolutionary Biology, talks about her most recent project, "A Land of Art and Botanicals: Collaborative Research at the Cueva de las Manitas, Oaxaca, Mexico."

Alicia Yamin, Lecturer on Law and the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, talks about Mexico's judicial reform plan, which makes all federal judges elected, rather than appointed positions. Yamin, who is also Adjunct Senior Lecturer on Health Policy and Management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, considers this a threat to Mexican democracy.

Alisha Holland, a Professor in the Government Department at Harvard University, discusses the situation in Ecuador, an Andean country that faces multiple challenges from organized crime, as well as economic and energy crises.

Pablo Pérez Ramos, an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, discusses “Oasis of Mezcal," his work in a Oaxacan rural community where agave-growing is changing agricultural production patterns. It is at once an intensely local story and a reflection of worldwide challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation.

Kathryn Sikkink, the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, talks about the findings of a new database for transitional justice: https://transitionaljusticedata.org/ You may find some of them surprising!

Ricardo Hausmann, the founder and Director of Harvard’s Growth Lab and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, was Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993). Here, he reflects on the crisis in his country following a disputed presidential election which most say was stolen by Venezuela's autocratic regime.