If you’d like to see more, I maintain a YouTube channel here.
David Myers and the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy offered me a unique opportunity to reflect out loud on writing history in troubled time. I took the occasion to explore my own concerns and conflicts about being a historian of citizenship in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. I very grateful to my UCLA colleagues who listened with care and then responded with compassion and important questions. You can watch here.
I was honored to speak to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health about Birthright Citizens. Their questions made plain that even in public health work, today’s questions and we might say the crisis of birthright have touched client communities. You can watch here.
I joined Elise Boddie for a discussion of Birthright Citizens, at Rutgers Law School, Newark — organized by the Center for Immigration Law, Policy and Justice and the Association of Black Law Students. Don’t miss Elise’s brilliant commentary later in the video where she illuminates our contemporary political struggles through the lens of 19th century struggles. It was a memorable exchange. Watch here.
“Birthrights.” NPR’s Latino USA. November 2018.
I spoke to Harvard Law’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and Program in Law and History about the history of birthright citizenship. The Q&A is worth listening to because this was my first public event held after President Trump announced his intent to somehow end birthright. Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin asked me the $64 thousand question, one that helped me to better understand how I approach my work as a public commentator. The video is here.
In November 2018, I visited Brown University, a guest of Presented by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America and the Department of American Studies at Brown University, as part of the Provost’s Reaffirming University Values lecture series. You can watch here.
“How African Americans Fought For and Won Birthright Citizenship 150 Years Before Trump Tried to Erase It.” Democracy Now. October 2018.
“The 14th Amendment and the History of Birthright Citizenship in the U.S.” NPR’s All Things Considered. October 2018.
“Ending Birthright Citizenship?” PRI’s The World. October 2018.
“Race and Rights in Antebellum America.” The Age of Jackson Podcast. October 2018.
“The American Circle of Citizenship: Who is Inside and Who is Outside.” Pacifica Radio’s Letters and Politics. August 2018.
“How Baltimore’s Free Blacks Asserted Their Rights Before the Civil War.” Roughly Speaking: The Baltimore Sun. July 2018.
“The Shaping of Citizenship.” WYPR’s On The Record. July 2018.
I am a HUGE fan of Mark Anthony Neal’s Left of Black. It was a real honor to talk with MAN about Birthright Citizens, and more. Check us out here.
Zocalo Public Square is an amazing organization. This program — “Why the U.S. Keeps Debating Citizenship Rights and Who Qualifies as a U.S. Citizen — brought me into conversation with folks I really admire — including the Atlantic’s Garrett Epps — and before a great Los Angeles audience. Their questions were the real heart of this event. See more here.
In July 2018, I kicked off the publication of Birthright Citizens with a book talk at Washington, DC’s Politics & Prose, in conversation with Howard Law’s Professor Lisa Crooms-Robinson. Listen in here.
In April 2018, I was the keynote speaker at the University of Michigan Flint commencement exercises. My subject was “Belonging,” and I explored struggles for belonging, from that of young college students to former slaves and even immigrants today: “Belonging is not who we are; it is what we do, what we believe, what were are willing to struggle for.” The video is here.
The subject of the University of Connecticut’s 2018 Draper Workshop was History and Law. I shared the afternoon with Ariela Gross and distinguished UConn colleagues including Manisha Sinha. It’s a short talk that highlights the lessons I learned through writing Birthright Citizens. It is here.
At Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute I took part in a series title “Who Belongs? Global Citizenship and Gender in the 21st Century.” I linked struggles over birthright citizenship to those over women’s rights and the belonging of immigrants and their children. You can watch here.
In November 2017, I gave the Dean’s Lecture on Race, Law, & Society at Notre Dame Law School: “Birthright Citizens: Winners and Losers in the Long History of the Fourteenth Amendment.” You can watch here.
I was interviewed by political scientist David Sehat for his podcast, MindPop, on whether “common ground” is possible between conservative and progressive thinkers. This conversation followed a two day long summer at GVSU’s Hauenstein Center on the topic. Listen in here.
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women … and Back was a keynote I delivered at the GVSU Hauenstein Center’s Progressive/Conservative Summit. Mary 2017.
Reflections on the Future University Community featured me, along with colleagues Terry McDonald and Ruby Tapia, reviewing the January 30 discussion between Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Susanne Baer. February 2017.
My colleagues Tiya Miles and Megan Sweeney took time out to talk with me about Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, sponsored by the Institute for Research of Women and Gender. You can watch us here. January 2017.
I spoke with Common Ground’s Joe Hogan about Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, and before the conversation I speculated about the 2016 presidential contest. You can listen here. November 2016.
At Bennett College, I returned to my grandfather’s pulpit in Pfeiffer Chapel to speak about the struggle and the hope of African American women’s history. The occasion was Bennett’s 90th Founder’s Day. You can watch here. September 2016.
Wisconsin Public Television broadcast my talk for the University of Wisconsin Law School on race and citizenship in the antebellum United States. You can catch the video here. March 2016.
For the Author’s Forum, I spent an extraordinary 90 minutes with historian and novelist Tiya Miles talking about history, fiction, and the writer’s life. Don’t miss Tiya’s debut novel, The Cherokee Rose! January 2016.
I spoke about my quest to write a family history about mixed-race identity in U.S. history, and the surprises that have emerged through that research. The talk, “The Color of History,” was inspired by the work of artist Marianetta Porter and was delivered as part of a project at the University of Michigan, Multiracial in a Monoracial World. December 2015.
CSPAN’s Landmark Cases: Scott v. Sandford. I joined GWU Law’s Chris Bracey and CSPAN’s Susan Swain for a 90 minute discussion of the Dred Scott case. October 2015.
At Indiana’s Franklin College I delivered a fall convocation lecture as an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. My subject was Loving v. Virginia. September 2015.
Reparation: A Roundtable was sponsored by the Duke University Forum for
Scholars and Publics, and featured me, Beryl Satter, and Melissa Nobles in a conversation led by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Duke University. March 2015.
“You gotta testify because the booty don’t lie”: The (Il)Legality of Black Womanhood” was part of Duke University’s day-long symposium on #Shondaland and the work of Shonda Rhimes. Duke University. February 2015.
The Children of Loving v. Virginia: Living at the Intersection of Law and Mixed-Race
Identity. University of Michigan Law School. January 2015.
State of Missouri v. Celia, A Slave: Slavery and Sexual Violence. C-SPAN American History TV, Lectures in History. December 2014.
What African American History Teaches Us About Identity and Privacy in an Age of Hyperconnectivity. University of Michigan. September 2014.
The Ethics of Civil Rights: Finding the Strength to Love. Bennett College. February 2014.
The Day of Jubilee? Interpreting the Emancipation Proclamation. Brown University. November 2013.
Emancipation’s Encounters: Seeing the Proclamation Through Soldiers’ Sketchbooks. University of Michigan. October 2012.
Birthright Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment. University of Maryland. Center for
the New America. March 2012.
Dred Scott v. Sandford. Charles H. Wright Museum of African America. December 2013.
Courthouse Stories: The Everyday Life of Freedom. With Liberty and Justice for All Symposium. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Lecture. The Henry Ford Museum. February 2011.
Reflections on Becoming a Research Subject, Or, Can an Activist Lawyer Write the History of Law? Center for Afroamerican and African Studies. 40th Anniversary Conference. March 2010.
Arming Black America: Race and Citizenship in the Era of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Institute for the Humanities. University of Michigan. February 2010.
Overturning Dred Scott v. Sandford. University of Pennsylvania Law School. September 2008.
Legacy of 1808: Deconstructing Reconstruction. National Constitution Center. November 2008.
The Legacy of 1808: A Historical Perspective. National Constitution Center. March 2008.