May 2
8:30AM – 4:30PM
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2026-05-02T08:30:00
2026-05-02T16:30:00
America/New_York
Gilder Lehrman Center Symposium | The US-Mexico Border and Race: Past and Present
Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
through generous support from the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies’ Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund, Yale University
IN-PERSON ONLY | REGISTER VIA THE LINK ABOVE
Xenophobia has “existed alongside and constrained America’s immigration tradition, determining just who can enter our so-called nation of immigrants and who cannot.”
–Erika Lee, America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States (Basic Books, 2019): 7
“Immigration restriction is a species of segregation on a large scale, by which inferior stock can be prevented from both diluting and supplanting good stocks.”
—Prescott Hall, founder of the U.S. Immigration Restriction League, 1912
This symposium explores how the US-Mexico border historically has been constructed through the politicization of race and segregation of communities. The racialization of the border and the crises it creates demonstrates the United States’ longstanding exclusionary approach towards foreign-born people seeking entry and belonging to the nation. In recent decades, in the name of “border security,” Democratic and Republican administrations alike have used various means to harden the U.S. Southern border and control the flow of migrants, asylum seekers, and goods—from restrictions on work visas and the asylum process, to increased physical barriers, surveillance technologies, and militarized enforcement mechanisms. As we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, however, the xenophobia embedded in U.S. immigration policy is revealing itself with disturbing clarity through widespread ICE raids, warrantless detention, family separation, concentration camps, deportation, and foreign imprisonment. At the same time, communities within the borderlands continue to develop creative modes to survive and resist these exclusionary forces. Free and open to the public, the program features panel discussions as well as a break-out session for teachers.
On Campus — 34 Hillhouse Avenue
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