Historical Lectures and Interviews

Vanderbilt Magazine, October 3, 2022 “When Associate Professor of History Paul Kramer decided to speak out against the use of waterboarding by U.S. forces during the Iraq War, he took an unfamiliar approach. Rather than write an academic article directed only at his colleagues, he tried his hand at a historical narrative…

This interview segment with NPR’s On the Media explores the political and symbolic history of the Statue of Liberty as an icon of immigration, drawing on research from the Slate piece “Who Does She Stand For?

This talk at the Spring 2018 Princeton symposium “The Future of the Puerto Rican Body,” held in response to Hurricane Maria and the bankruptcy crisis, uses recent scholarship to explore the historical relationship between Puerto Rican migration to the mainland US and US colonialism in Puerto Rico.

C-SPAN June 22, 2018 A panel of historians discussed U.S. immigration policies and migration patterns to America dating back to the late 19th century. The topics covered in a session titled “The Geopolitics of Migration” include Chinese and Mexican immigration, travel restrictions in the civil rights era, and the criteria…

This narrative essay recounts struggles over the Statue of Liberty’s symbolic relationship to immigration on the hundredth anniversary of its dedication, in 1986. The Reagan administration, which was actively excluding and deporting immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean, used the occasion to assert American exceptionalism and to celebrate the…

KCRW, Hosted by Madeleine Brand Feb. 10, 2016 If John Kasich won by coming in second place last night in New Hampshire, then Donald Trump really won when he took the top spot with Republican voters. He kicked off his victory speech with what is by now a familiar slogan: “Make America…

This is a fuller, more detailed version of the above essay, on the history of the U. S. naval base at Guantánamo.