Course Description

Instructor: Shai Robkin

Immigration is a fraught and misunderstood topic in America’s social discourse, with much of what we believe based largely on myth.  How different were the experiences of immigrants from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to those of immigrants today?  How different are the children of immigrants from countries like El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala coming to the US today from those who arrived on our shores from Great Britain, Norway and Eastern Europe a 100-150 years ago?  How do immigrants and their children compare educationally, professionally and economically with US born residents?  We’ll dig into these questions along with many others and discuss the policy implications of what we find.

Bio: Shai (pronounced “Shy”) Robkin works with small and mid-size business executives to leverage the power of behavioral economics.  A serial entrepreneur, Shai, together with his wife Judy, opened in 1981 Israel’s first combination bookstore/coffee shop.  They returned to Atlanta in 1984 to care for aging parents, using the proceeds from the sale of the Israeli store to acquire Vernon, a manufacturer and distributor of library supplies. Vernon’s technology division was sold in 2011 to One Equity Partners, a division of JP Morgan.  The library supplies part of the company was sold in June 2019.  He is an active volunteer on behalf of a number of causes, including instant runoff/ranked choice voting and living kidney donation.  His work as a behavioral economist led him to explore behavioral science in general and to start and lead a social psychology podcast club.