citizenship 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
7/2/2023
Why We are Still Debating Birthright Citizenship
by Martha S. Jones
Opposition to birthright citizenship has, historically and today, reflected opposition to the idea of equal membership in the political community of the nation and has been inextricable from the idea that white Americans should be privileged citizens, argues the leading historian of the subject.
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SOURCE: KJZZ
2/7/2023
Professor Discusses the Hidden History of Passports
Patrick Bixby's work examines the cultural history of the passport and how documents secure the freedom to travel.
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SOURCE: NPR
10/17/2022
SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to Citizenship Law Disadvantaging American Samoans
Residents of US territories are able to receive birthright citizenship if an act of Congress grants it to them. While Congress's refusal to do so for residents of American Samoa has clear racist roots, the Court declined to hear a case challenging this exclusion.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/3/2022
The Reconstruction Amendments and the Basis of American Abortion Rights
by Peggy Cooper Davis
When the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were debated, concerns about the protection of both public rights of citizenship and private, intimate rights of individuals were front and center. There is, notwithstanding Samuel Alito's opinion, a long tradition of constitutional respect for privacy.
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SOURCE: WNYC
9/20/2021
What is Citizenship? A Conversation with Mae Ngai on The Takeaway
The Takeaway speaks with historian Mae Ngai about how notions of U.S. citizenship have changed over time.
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SOURCE: Black Perspectives
8/4/2021
Allegiance, Birthright and Race in America
by William Darity, Jr. and Charles Ali Bey
The Thirteenth Amendment demonstrated that a person could be both a citizen and a slave (via conviction). What, then, was the citizenship status of the enslaved in America, and what does that tell us about the debates over birthright citizenship and reparations today?
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/3/2020
The Trump Administration Just Made the Citizenship Test Harder. How Would You Do?
Can you ace the new test for becoming a naturalized US Citizen?
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/30/2020
128 Tricky Questions That Could Stand Between You and U.S. Citizenship
Irish Immigrant Maeve Higgins looks at the expanded civics test for naturalization, and gives it a failing grade--unless its purpose is to reduce immigration.
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8/30/2020
Constitutional Textualism and Congressional Debate Over the 14th Amendment
by Alan J. Singer
Supreme Court decisions based on text without context have been responsible for some of the greatest perversions of justice in United States history, mostly around denying the scope of authority the 14th Amendment grants to the government to enforce civil equality.
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SOURCE: The Intercept
8/18/2020
Trump Said Two Years Ago That He Would Deny Citizenship to Americans Like Kamala Harris
In 2018, the president called birthright citizenship “ridiculous” and vowed to stop it by executive order.
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SOURCE: Vox
8/14/2020
Birtherism 2.0
by Matthew Yglesias
Right-wing challenges to Kamala Harris's eligibility for the presidency depend on a legal argument that American-born children of immigrants are a lesser category of citizen. There is no basis under the Constitution for this.
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8/16/2020
Of Course Kamala Harris is a Citizen
by Derek Litvak
John Eastman's claims that Kamala Harris is not a natural-born U.S. citizen fly in the face of 14th Amendment jurisprudence and Eastman's own prior defenses of Ted Cruz's eligibility for the presidency.
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8/16/2020
Citizenship, the 14th Amendment, and Trump’s War on Undocumented Immigrants
by Alan J. Singer
Recent attacks on Kamala Harris's citizenship and eligibility to serve as Vice President depend on willful misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment and ignorance of the specific racist injustices it was written to prevent.
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8/13/2020
The Right Questions Kamala Harris's Citizenship, Eligibility to Be Vice President
A Newsweek op ed argues that because Kamala Harris's parents were not US citizens at the time she was born in Oakland, CA, that she does not qualify as a "natural born" citizen. Historians respond.
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7/5/2020
"It Has Not Been My Habit to Yield": Charles Sumner and the Fight for Equal Naturalization Rights
by Lucy Salyer
Senator Charles Sumner lost his battle on the Fourth of July 1870, with dire consequences for both Asian immigrant communities and the prospects of a more racially egalitarian America.
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SOURCE: American Civil War Museum
3/30/2020
15th Turns 150!
The presence of new citizens in the form of formerly enslaved people forced Congress to consider what citizenship and voting actually meant.
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SOURCE: Perspectives on History
3/30/2020
Responsibility and Civility: The Unwritten Essentials
by Mary Lindemann
Critical to the prospering of any academic group are the unwritten expectations that underlie and ground its workings. When they’re observed, organizations prosper; when they’re disregarded, things go terribly wrong.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
3/12/2020
Counting Everyone—Citizens and Non-Citizens—In the 2020 Census is Crucial
by Brendan A. Shanahan
Even without a citizenship question, the Trump administration wants to shape how states reapportion their legislatures.
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SOURCE: Time
9/17/19
Citizenship Day Used to Be Called 'I Am an American Day.' Here's How It Came to Be—and Why It Changed
Long before Citizenship Day was made official, there was “I Am An American Day.” Its initial conception was a sign of its times, and its evolution has been significant too.
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SOURCE: Time
9/17/19
The History of Citizenship Day Is a Reminder That Being an American Has Always Been Complicated
by S. Deborah Kang
“We welcome you,” Truman declared, “not to a narrow nationalism but to a great community based on a set of universal ideals.”