Immigrant groups are also increasingly dissimilar to the host society, contributing to feelings of distrust and the rise of authoritarianism within these host countries, said , a professor of psychology in Georgetown University ������Ƶ & Sciences. 

, published in January 2026 by Cambridge University Press, focuses on questions raised by the current immigration landscape. Moghaddam wrote the book with co-authors (MPP’19, G’22), who received her Ph.D. in psychology from Georgetown in 2022, and (MPP’22, G’25), a Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Psychology and Jesuit priest who received the .

From a purely fiscal perspective, that immigration boosts economic growth. “But people are not rational,” said Moghaddam. “People are driven by irrationality, emotions. Often, they are driven by fears, hatred, anger.”

Studying and researching the issue of immigration from the perspective of psychology opens the door to examine the emotional and behavioral aspects to modern immigration. 

“Why are we seeing immigration as a threat? This is a perception. It’s a psychological experience,” Moghaddam said. “On the immigration side, what are the perceptions and aspirations and hopes of immigrants as they arrive in America? That’s a psychological feeling as well. So on both sides, both the immigrants and the hosts, the key to their relationship is psychological.”

Advocating for Omniculturalism

“Immigration is inevitable, so the question is, how do we manage it?” Moghaddam said. The new book aims to answer this question.

Approaching the issue from a global perspective, The New Immigration Challenge explores challenges of managing this inevitable migration while immigrants are increasingly dissimilar from the host society. 

“It’s this dissimilarity that creates threats or feelings of threats in the host population and creates this backlash against immigrants,” Moghaddam said. “In the United States and in Europe, this backlash is the foundation for the rise of authoritarian political movements and leaders.”

The book is based on Moghaddam’s research into immigration, which he has been examining since the 1980s, and on the Ph.D. theses completed by co-authors Hendricks and Salas-Schweikart. Hendricks’ research focuses on American identity and immigration, and Salas-Schweikart’s focuses on diversity and trust.

“We often hear about immigration in the news and how much people are against it — and of course others speaking out against those who are against it,” Hendricks said. “I think the book’s focus on the psychological perspective is important because it helps to explain why this is and also maybe more importantly, highlights that it’s not just the U.S. and it’s not just ‘western’ countries. These feelings or attitudes are global.”

In The New Immigration Challenge, the authors advocate for omniculturalism.

“Omniculturalism is the celebration of similarities,” Moghaddam said. “Based on scientific evidence, human beings are much more similar than they are different, and our focus should be on how we are similar so that we can meet challenges of nuclear proliferation, human-induced global warming and more.” 

The authors argue for the idea of omniculturalism so that societies can celebrate commonalities and focus on common challenges.

“That’s how psychology can help us: by acknowledging the challenges that we face when relating with immigrants, and how we can navigate these challenges by highlighting the commonalities,” Salas-Schweikart said.

Impacts of Inequality on the Human Mind

The book was published as part of the , edited by Moghaddam for Cambridge University Press. The series highlights research on the impacts of inequality on the human mind, a blindspot in the field of psychology.

Poverty and food insecurity shape psychological processes such as intelligence and decision making. However, mainstream psychology “completely neglects” these impacts, Moghaddam said.

“If we look at any introductory psychology text, there’s a lot of discussion about the impact of different group memberships, including gender and ethnicity and even religion, but there’s almost nothing about poverty and social class,” he said.

Moghaddam started the series to draw attention to the impacts of poverty and class inequality on psychology and how these forces shape the brains of almost who live in poverty. There are in the series and one more is set to be published this February. Moghaddam is the author of three other books in the series: , and .

As the latest book of the series, The New Immigration Challenge contributes to the collection through its analysis of immigrants and poor populations of the host nation, Moghaddam said.  

“The common plight of working-class whites and working-class immigrants, that’s something that needs to be taken up,” he said. “The common theme has to be poverty and dealing with poverty, not the color of your skin.”

The prestigious award is given annually by to those “who have taken on issues of world importance and presented viewpoints that could lead to a more just and peaceful world,” . Busby, a professor of public affairs , started his research on the links between climate and security as a Ph.D. student at Georgetown and has received a prize of $100,000 with the award. 

“It’s a gratifying recognition of about 20 years of work in this space,” he said.

Busby’s findings on why climate change leads to negative security consequences in some countries but not others is presented in his book, , published in 2022. 

“The Grawemeyer Award is one of the most significant awards that a scholar of international relations can receive,” said , the dean of the ������Ƶ & Sciences. “Josh Busby’s pathbreaking book on the relationship between climate change and conflict is a deserving recipient. Professor Busby is one of our many doctoral alumni whose work is having a transformational impact on how we think about important issues confronting society today. We couldn’t be prouder.”

Managing with Thoughtful Policy

The central question that animated Busby’s book is why climate change affects some places but not others with severe negative security outcomes. He looked into case studies for answers, pairing countries with similar exposure to environmental changes. 

“I use paired cases of why Somalia had a famine after being exposed to drought, but neighboring Ethiopia did not,” Busby said. “Why did Syria have a civil war after a drought, but neighboring Lebanon did not? Why did Myanmar experience such wide-scale loss of life after exposure to a severe cyclone, but neighboring India and Bangladesh did not?”

The differences, Busby said, had to do with a combination of state capacity, political inclusion and foreign assistance. The countries that did the best to prepare for climate impacts were those that had the state capacity to anticipate and prepare for them and those that were more politically inclusive to ensure that all interest groups were represented in society and government, he said.

“I think the answers that I came up with provide us with some hope that the negative consequences of climate change can be managed and are not inevitable,” Busby said. “Now, that’s not to say that we don’t need to address climate change. We absolutely do in terms of reducing emissions, but the impacts themselves, on some level, can be managed with thoughtful policy.”

Busby’s dissertation work at Georgetown focused on social movements and why some social movements succeeded in getting their issues taken up by governments and others failed. One of the issues he studied was climate change advocacy movements. 

While working on his dissertation, he received a fellowship at the Brookings Institution, a think tank based in DC, where he co-authored a paper titled, for then-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. 

A year later, Busby accepted a postdoctoral fellowship to , where he explored the links between climate change and U.S. national security. From then on, he built upon his work in the security space.

“It all started at Georgetown with the accidental circumstances of me being asked to write a paper as a pre-doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution,” Busby said.

‘A Treasured Life Experience’

Busby saw DC and Georgetown University as the perfect places to pursue his combined interests in academia and political science when he applied for graduate school after serving as an agricultural volunteer with the Peace Corps in Ecuador. 

“There were fabulous professors in the government department,” he said. “And the intellectual environment there from ‘99 to 2004 was just super interesting. We had a community of people who were all interested in questions about the future of the international system. There were terrific people in a great learning environment, and it was a treasured life experience.”

Busby was a teaching and research assistant for the Department of Government and a teaching assistant for the School of Foreign Service during his time on the Hilltop. He considers current and former Georgetown professors, including , and the late , as influences who helped shape his worldview. 

From 2021 to 2023, he served as a senior advisor for climate at the Department of Defense, and he has contributed to the long-running international relations blog, . 

Busby’s current research includes clean energy technologies, and he is at the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations. 

“There are opportunities for us to ensure that the negative effects of climate change are not inevitable, that we have human agency to shape the world,” Busby said. “The more we do to both transition to cleaner energy and prepare for climate impacts, the better off we’ll be.”