From Emma Goldman to Edward Snowden

NYU’s Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences is hosting From Emma Goldman to Edward Snowden: The Denaturalization of Radicals and the Reshaping of American Citizenship, a session on Patrick Weil’s recent book.  It will take place on Wednesday March 5, from 5:30-7:00 PM in NYU’s Jurow Lecture Hall, Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East.  Michel Rosenfeld, Cardozo Law, will comment.  According to the announcement:

Patrick Weil will be discussing the denaturalization of American citizens based on political grounds, beginning with the infamous 1909 case of Emma Goldman. Goldman was soon joined by Socialists, Communists, and Nazis, but also by Asian Americans, foreign-born Americans living abroad, and during World War II, thousands of German-Americans. Typically associated with 20th century authoritarian regimes, denaturalization affected more than 140,000 naturalized and native-born Americans since the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1906. The Naturalization Act began the transfer of naturalization authority to the Federal government, despite tense debates that divided the Supreme Court between 1942 and 1967. Professor Weil traces the historical and legal processes of denaturalization over the last century, emphasizing the key Supreme Court decision of 1967 of Afroyim v. Rusk. The decision turned the possibility of revoking citizenship into a guarantee of protection for native-born Americans, introducing in the process the theory that sovereignty belongs to citizens themselves and not the state.

RSVP here