Join us for a timely panel discussion examining key moments in U.S. immigration legislation—past and present—and how history continues to shape today’s policies and debates. The conversation will explore how Jewish immigration and exclusion fit into the broader story of American immigration restrictions. Panelists include Katherine Benton-Cohen, PhD, Professor of History, Georgetown University, Ted Gong, Executive Director of the 1882 Foundation, and Yael Schacher, Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International. Moderated by Arno Rosenfeld, reporter for The Forward. This event is offered both in person and virtually.
In partnership with The Forward, 1882 Foundation, and Edlavitch DCJCC's Center for Social Responsibility.
About the Panelists
Katherine Benton-Cohen is professor of history at Georgetown University. She is the author of Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy (Harvard, 2018) and Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Harvard, 2009). She served as historical advisor to the nonfiction feature film, Bisbee ’17, and has been a visiting scholar in Japan and Germany. Her work on gender and immigration has appeared in a variety of media outlets including “Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien,” the BBC, NPR, Time, and PBS American Experience. She serves as an OAH Distinguished Lecturer, on the Board of Modern American History, and on the Scholarly Advisory Council for the new Wisconsin Historical Museum. Benton-Cohen is an Arizona native, whose Jewish immigrant ancestors settled on the US-Mexico border.
Ted Gong retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009 as a Senior Foreign Service Officer. He worked on policies, laws, and management related visas, border security, immigration, refugees, citizenship, and consular services at the Departments of State and Homeland Security. He led the national grass roots effort for Congress in 2011 and 2012 to apologize for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and is Founder-Director of the 1882 Foundation. The Foundation broadens public understanding of the Chinese American experience through preserving oral histories and historical sites, organizing teacher workshops, and building collaborations among APA museums and historical societies. In 2024, the Sierra Summit Camp of the First Transcontinental Railroad was registered as a National Historic Landmark through his leadership. He is President of the DC Lodge of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. He was educated at the University of California in History, University of Hawaii in Asian Studies, and U.S. Army War College in National Strategic Studies. He received a Frederick Douglass FD200 Award in 2019.
Dr. Yael Schacher is Director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International and an historian of U.S. immigration law and of refugee and asylum policy. She is currently working on a report for Refugees International on the concept of safe countries in deportation agreements. She is also finishing her monograph on the history of asylum in the United States since the late nineteenth century.
About the Moderator
Arno Rosenfeld is an enterprise reporter at The Forward where he covers antisemitism, including how different segments of the Jewish community are seeking to address the problem. He has reported from the Charlottesville courtroom where white supremacists were on trial for organizing a deadly rally and the Texas suburb where a rabbi and his congregants were held hostage. His coverage of George Washington University, which has alternately been described as a haven for Jewish students and a hotbed of antisemitism, won the Boris Smolar Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting from the American Jewish Press Association in 2023.
Arno previously covered state politics for the Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming’s statewide newspaper and got his start in Jewish journalism at j. The Jewish News of Northern California, and has written for JTA, The Times of Israel and other publications. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Image Credit: Panel Conversation at the Capital Jewish Museum, October 2023.
