The Society for History in the Federal Government in conjunction with the History and Public Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars is pleased to present the 36th annual Richard G. Hewlett Lecture. This year's lecture will feature a roundtable discussion by four expert panelists about the legacies of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965:
Ruth Wasem, domestic policy specialist at the Congressional Research Service, U.S. Library of Congress
Marian Smith, served as Chief Historian for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Phil Wolgin, Associate Director for the Immigration Policy team at American Progress
Tom Gjelten, Correspondent for Religion and Belief on the National Desk at NPR.
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on October 3, 1965, this act significantly reformed the United States' immigration procedures by eliminating national origins quotas as defined by the Immigration Act of 1924 and replacing the quotas with overall hemispheric caps on visas issued to applicants. Fifty years after the Immigration Act's implementation, the Hewlett Lecture panelists will briefly discuss the legacies of the Immigration Act, then will engage the audience in a stimulating question-and-answer session.
Please join us for a wonderful evening of refreshments and engaging dialogue with Society members, distinguished guests, and policy professionals in the heart of Washington, D.C.
The Society will host a meet and greet reception with h'orderves and beverages at 6pm in the 6th Floor Moynihan Board Room. The roundtable discussion will begin at 7pm in the 6th Floor Flom Auditorium, followed by a question and answer session.
A few members have had trouble with the registration. If you have any issue, please email
lizziecharles@gmail.com for assistance.
Biographies for Panelists:
Marian L. Smith served as Chief Historian for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from 1988 to 2003, then its successor the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) from 2003 to 2014. Over those years she built a history program to both serve the federal agency and public researchers and increase access to official records. Her current work focuses on records and information management, particularly connecting 20th century immigration records to 21st century technology.
For the past 25 years, Ruth Wasem has been a domestic policy specialist at the Congressional Research Service, U.S. Library of Congress. In that capacity, she has researched, written, and led seminars on immigration and social welfare policies. Congressional committees and offices have released many of her reports, which are widely cited. She also leads CRS’ interdisciplinary Immigration Team and coordinates various cross-cutting briefings for Congress. She has testified before the U.S. Congress most recently on asylum policy and trends, on human rights protections in immigration law, and on the push-pull forces on unauthorized migration. Since 2012, she has also been an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy in the Washington Program of the University of Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Wasem earned masters and doctorate degrees in History at the University of Michigan and received her baccalaureate degree in History, Political Science and Psychology from Muskingum University. Recent publications include Tackling Unemployment: The Legislative Dynamics of the Employment Act of 1946 (Upjohn Institute Press, 2013) and “Welfare and Public Benefits” in American Immigration: An Encyclopedia of Political, Social, and Cultural Change, 2nd Edition, (M.E. Sharpe, 2014). Wasem won the 2014-2015 Kluge Staff Fellowship at the U.S. Library of Congress to research the history of the legislative drive to end race- and nationality-based immigration, which resulted in the Immigration Act of 1965.
Philip E. Wolgin is the Associate Director for the Immigration Policy team at American Progress. He directs American Progress’ research and publications on immigration and has helped lead the team’s work on a diverse set of issues, such as immigration reform, child refugees at the United States’ southern border, border security, executive action, rebuttals to nativist claims about immigrants, and E-Verify. Philip has directed reports on a range of subjects related to immigrants in America, from studies on the daily lives of the undocumented through the “Documenting the Undocumented” series, to producing the first-of-its-kind analysis of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. At American Progress, he has held the positions of Senior Policy Analyst and Policy Analyst, both on the Immigration team.
Philip is active in local D.C.-area immigration and refugee causes and serves on the national board of directors of the refugee organization HIAS. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as International Migration Review and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, as well as in online publications such as The Huffington Post. A native of New Jersey, Philip earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from New York University. Follow him on Twitter: @pwolgin.
Tom Gjelten covers issues of religion, faith, and belief for NPR News, a beat that encompasses such areas as the changing religious landscape in America, the formation of personal identity, the role of religion in politics, and social and cultural conflict arising from religious differences. His reporting draws on his many years covering national and international news from posts in Washington and around the world. His new book, A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story (Simon & Schuster), recounts the impact on America of the 1965 Immigration Act, which officially opened the country's doors to immigrants of color.
In 1986, Gjelten became one of NPR's pioneer foreign correspondents, posted first in Latin America and then in Central Europe. In the years that followed, he covered the wars in Central America, social and political strife in South America, the first Gulf War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the transitions to democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His reporting from Sarajevo from 1992 to 1994 was the basis for his book Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege (HarperCollins), praised by the New York Times as "a chilling portrayal of a city's slow murder." He is also the author of Professionalism in War Reporting: A Correspondent's View (Carnegie Corporation) and a contributor to Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know (W. W. Norton).
After returning from his overseas assignments, Gjelten covered U.S. diplomacy and military affairs, first from the State Department and then from the Pentagon. He was reporting live from the Pentagon at the moment it was hit on September 11, 2001, and he was NPR's lead Pentagon reporter during the early war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Gjelten has also reported extensively from Cuba in recent years. His 2008 book, Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (Viking), is a unique history of modern Cuba, told through the life and times of the Bacardi rum family. The New York Times selected it as a "Notable Nonfiction Book," and the Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and San Francisco Chronicle all listed it among their "Best Books of 2008."
