Last week in my freshman geography seminar, I assigned a book I deeply admire: Ray Suarez’s “We Are Home,” a collection of oral histories from recent immigrants about the American Dream. Suarez asks new Americans to tell the story of how they came to our shores — not just geographically, but morally and generationally. Who came before you? What did they endure? What did they build? I wanted to ask the same question of all my first-year students, as they are at the beginning of adulthood. Many are away from home for the first time, and I assumed that they...