Register for Xenophobia in America

The United States is known as a nation of immigrants. Paradoxically, it is also a nation of xenophobia, and this irrational fear, hatred, and hostility toward immigrants has been a defining feature of our country from the colonial era to the Trump administration. Benjamin Franklin ridiculed Germans for their “strange and foreign ways.” Americans’ anxiety over Irish Catholics turned xenophobia into a national political movement. Chinese immigrants were excluded, Japanese immigrants incarcerated, and Mexican immigrants deported. Today, Americans fear Muslims, Latinos, and the so-called “browning” of America.

Join us March 4, when award-winning author and historian Dr. Erika Lee helps us to confront this history and explains how xenophobia works, why it has endured, and how it threatens the United States.

Dr. Erika Lee, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies; Distinguished McKnight University Professor; Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History; director, Immigration History Research Center, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.