US-Mexico Border and Race Symposium

by Michelle Zacks, Associate Director, Gilder Lehrman Center

Scheduled for Saturday, May 2, this is a one-day symposium at Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave., free and open to the public, called The US-Mexico Border and Race, Past and Present. It is organized by the Gilder Lehrman Center in close collaboration with GLC Associate Research Scholar, Dr. Melissa Torres (Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley). The symposium features a keynote address by Prof. Sonia Hernandez (Texas A&M), followed by two panel discussions and a break-out Q&A session for K-12 teachers. Continental breakfast and lunch will be served, as well as afternoon snacks and beverages.

The program was conceived as a follow-up to the Yale and Slavery project, and the various projects at Yale focusing on the university’s and New Haven’s key roles in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. This program will follow that thread by focusing on the xenophobia and white supremacist ideas that have long been embedded in U.S. immigration policy broadly and in the construction and policing of the US-Mexico border in particular. Speakers will connect the histories of violent, racialized border control policies with the contemporary violence of ICE raids, warrantless detention, family separation, concentration camps, deportation, and foreign imprisonment. They also will address how communities within the borderlands continue to develop creative modes to survive and resist these exclusionary forces.

We hope you can join us for this important conversation. For more information, for the full schedule for the day, and to register, please go to bit.ly/4tZBkcu.