Citizenship Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

Confessions of a Poll Worker

When I volunteered to work on Election Day, my melting pot neighborhood taught me about the complexity of Trump’s America

November 5, 2020 • by Mitchell Abidor

It’s not the least of the paradoxes of the Trump era that this wannabe authoritarian did more than any decent man to lead Americans to assume their civic duties. Trump’s attacks on the electoral process led 52,000 New Yorkers to sign up for work at the polls, 18,000 more than in ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part IX

On the heat and halitosis of the State

July 28, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

This palpative uncommonwealth, a thing held / or pulled apart like a tightrope or meat off the bone....

Politics

Are Americans Rethinking Who They Are?

“Consumers” and “taxpayers” can’t save a republic

July 28, 2020 • by John Stoehr

This is bad policy and bad politics, as my friend Marty Longman wrote last week. Two hundred bucks weekly is better than a payroll tax cut. No one would see that (especially if they’re unemployed). But people would see less money coming in amid a pandemic, recession, and housing crisis just ...

Feature

Crime Involving Moral Turpitude

I took six books from the library without checking them out. Now I can’t become U.S. citizen.

August 8, 2019 • by Abraham Paulos

The following essay is featured in the first issue of Huddled Masses. “Crime Involving Moral Turpitude (CIMT) refers generally to conduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile, or depraved, contrary to the rules of morality...”—Immigrant Naturalization Act It was April Fools’ Day in 2003. I sat in a tight ...

Feature

Monuments to Men

An Interview and Epilogue to Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America

August 29, 2018 • by Martha S. Jones

Martha S. Jones (MSJ): My first inspiration was the years I spent as a public interest lawyer. I represented poor people of color in lower Manhattan’s trial courts and rarely did those cases reach high courts or turn on constitutional questions. Still, I knew that my clients were fighting for fundamental ...

Feature

The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

Why liberal nationalists can’t have their cake and eat it, too

August 28, 2018 • by Lior Erez

This July, German football star Mesut Özil resigned from the national team. His resignation provides a dramatic illustration of the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe. Özil, the son of Turkish immigrants, resigned with a public letter on social media. “I am a German when we win, an immigrant when we lose,” he ...

The Özil Affair and the Limits of Progressive Nationalism

Feature

How You Can Help Immigrant Children Separated From Their Families

We need to take action against the U.S. government’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Policy

June 28, 2018 • by Melanie Hart and Maya Wiley

We stand in support of a humane and equitable immigration path, policy, and process for all people. The federal government’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy promises to prosecute all persons who illegally cross the border, which includes individuals who seek asylum. Under the zero tolerance policy, thousands of children were forcibly ...

How You Can Help Immigrant Children Separated From Their Families

Feature

Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

Past Present Episode 127

April 24, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the life and legacy of Barbara Bush, Starbucks’ race problem, and the U.S. Census.

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Barbara Bush, Starbucks, and the U.S. Census

Feature

No Border Police, No Border Problems

May 26, 2016 • by Chiara Bottici

Most of the debate about the European refugee crisis revolves around whether the responsibility of handling them belongs to European institutions or to individual nation states, and, if the latter, which among them: the first country of entry (as the Dublin regulations established) or some other country. In this brief ...

Feature

We Refugees

May 23, 2016 • by Daniel Loick

In 1943 Hannah Arendt published a short essay in the Jewish periodical "The Menorah Journal" entitled We Refugees. She described in it a widespread refusal among Jews who had escaped the Nazis to call themselves “refugees." Having lost everything -- their occupation, their language, their family -- they ...

Multi Media

The Camp as a Space of Political Membership

Video of Nando Sigona’s Lecture

March 6, 2015 • by Douglas de Toledo Piza

The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility hosted a lecture by Nando Sigona entitled "The Camp as a Space of Political Membership," with discussion from professor Michel Agier on February 17, 2015, in the Klein Conference Room at 66 W. 12th Street. Included is a video of that event.

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