Foundational Concepts: Refugee and Human Rights

After World War II, nations around the world developed a framework to define what it meant to be a “refugee” and provide for refugee rights and protections. In this talk, Goodman will discuss how the U.S. resettled refugee groups during the Cold War, at times in alignment with the international framework, and at others, straying from it to serve U.S. political aims. With the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. committed to ongoing resettlement of refugees and to other human rights principles. In practice however, the U.S. treatment and reception of refugees and asylum seekers have been shaped by political factors and considerations beyond, and sometimes at odds with, obligations under U.S. and international law.

This program is part of our “Foundational Concepts” series. Throughout the 2024-2025 academic year, leading and engaging scholars will help us reflect on some of the core ideas, themes, and theories that structure contemporary work in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. Our primary concern will be the history of these concepts and their adaption for the twenty-first century.

Carly Goodman is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University-Camden. Her book Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction (UNC Press, 2023) received the First Book Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. She serves as senior editor of Made by History at TIME Magazine, (formerly at the Washington Post).

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