Immigrant Justice and the Promise of Sanctuary Schools with Dr. Chandler Miranda
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In this episode, we talked with Dr. Chandler Miranda. She is an Assistant Professor of Education at Molloy University, an anthropologist of education, and a former high school teacher. Her work is rooted in a deep commitment to understanding and improving the educational experiences of recently arrived immigrant youth. She studies how schools and educators navigate the pressures of exclusionary policies, accountability mandates, and a hostile political climate—while also imagining new ways of creating classrooms and school communities where students feel a sense of belonging and can thrive. She is the author of Sanctuary School: Innovating to Empower Immigrant Youth.
In the Thick of It is a project of the Public Ethnography Lab, housed in the Department of Anthropology at American University. We are a center focused on making ethnographic work matter beyond academia. This is our second season, and it builds on conversations that began at the Public Anthropology Conference held in November 2025. Throughout the season, we have conversations with presenters from the conference who are using ethnography and qualitative methods across a wide range of fields. In the episodes, we will dive into the behind-the-scenes of their work by exploring the choices, challenges, and creativity that go into qualitative methods.
Read:
Sanctuary School: Innovating to Empower Immigrant Youth
Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the Twenty-First Century: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11hpsmj
“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehesi Coates: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side by Eve L. Ewing
Music Credits:
"Study And Relax" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/