2016-2017 ISI 'Trespassing' Residency: Daniel Kanstroom, March 20-24

The Interdisciplinary Studies Institute (ISI) was delighted to welcome Daniel Kanstroom as our distinguished Resident for 2016-17. He visited the UMass Amherst campus from March 21-24 as part of the ISI’s 2016-17 theme, ‘Trespassing.’ On March 22, Professor Kanstroom delivered a public lecture entitled ‘Global Deportation: The Rise of a Dangerous New Phenomenon’ (Old Chapel Great Hall, 4.30 pm), and during the week he also engaged with faculty, graduate students, and the local community, including the Pioneer Valley Worker's Center. 

Daniel Kanstroom is Professor of Law and Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College, and also Associate Director of the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He teaches Immigration and Refugee Law, International Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and the International Human Rights Semester in Practice. Professor Kanstroom was the founder of the Boston College Immigration and Asylum clinic in which students represent indigent noncitizens and asylum-seekers. Together with his students, he has won many high-profile immigration and asylum cases and has provided counsel for hundreds of clients over more than a decade. He and his students have also written amicus briefs for the U.S. Supreme Court, organized innumerable public presentations in schools, churches, community centers, courts and prisons, and have advised many community groups. He was a co-founder of the Immigration Spring Break Trips, where students work on immigration law cases during their Spring Break. Professor Kanstroom’s newest initiative, the Post-Deportation Human Rights Project, seeks to conceptualize and develop a new field of law while representing US deportees abroad and undertaking empirical study of the effects of deportation on families and communities. His most recent books include Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora, (Oxford University Press 2012); and Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Harvard University Press 2007). He is also a co-editor of The New Deportations Delirium (NYU Press, 2015) and Constructing “Illegality”: Immigrant Experiences, Critiques, and Resistance (editor, with Cecilia Menjívar) (Cambridge University Press 2013).

Professor Kanstroom’s public lecture took place in collaboration with the College of Behavioral Science series, ‘Social Science Matters: Perspectives on Migration.' Additionally, he met with this year's ISI fellows, facilitated a graduate student/faculty seminar, and met with undergraduate students in class visits.