Professor Anna Pegler-Gordon discusses the role of photography in shaping immigration policy and the perception of sociocultural issues. After her lecture, Pegler-Gordon will moderate a panel discussion with Carl Takei, the senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality; Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at NYU School of Law; and Bitta Mostofi, an immigrant rights advocate and human rights organizer. The discussion will consider contemporary US immigration policy, forced removal and detention, incarceration, surveillance, and civil liberties.
This is a free event, but please register in advance. ICP Members have access to preferred seating in our reserved members’ section.
Our ICP Museum–public program combination ticket grants $10 entry starting at 4:30 PM to those attending the program. Tickets are only available online when you register for the program.
Bios
Professor Anna Pegler-Gordon’s teaching and research interests include: immigration, race, citizenship, visual culture, and popular culture. At Michigan State University, she has taught courses in Asian American history, immigration policy, comparative race and ethnic relations, and US racial and immigration history. Pegler-Gordon has received fellowships for her teaching and research, including national awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Japanese Association for American Studies, and the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. She has received a teacher-scholar award, as well as an Intramural Research Grant Program (IRGP) grant and a Lilly Teaching Fellowship. During her recent research leave, Pegler-Gordon was a visiting research fellow at the University of London School of Advanced Study (2008) and was one of two scholars selected nationally for a teaching residency in Japan (2009). Her American Quarterly article, “Chinese Exclusion, Photography, and the Development of US Immigration Policy,” was selected for inclusion as the lead essay in Best American History Essays 2008. Her first book, In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of US Immigration Policy (University of California Press, 2009), won the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s 2009 Theodore Saloutus prize “for the book judged best on any aspect of the immigration history of the United States.” Pegler-Gordon is currently researching her second book, a study of Asian immigrants at Ellis Island.
Carl Takei is a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality. He is also a Yonsei-generation Japanese American whose family was incarcerated during World War II. He litigates police practices, advances the ACLU’s affirmative vision for bias-free and constitutional policing, and coordinates policing-related litigation and advocacy across multiple ACLU projects and centers. The scope of this work includes all federal, state, and local police forces that operate in US communities.
Previously, Carl was a staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, where he worked on prison privatization, immigration detention, and the intersection between the federal criminal justice system and immigration enforcement. He has also served as a staff attorney/Tony Dunn Foundation law fellow at the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital and as a law clerk for US District Judge Paul Barbadoro in the US District Court for the District of New Hampshire. Carl holds a JD, magna cum laude, from Boston College Law School and a BA from Brown University.
Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer, is director of Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law. His work focuses on US immigration policy at the federal, state, and local levels; the intersection of labor and immigration law; immigration enforcement; civil liberties; and immigrant integration. Prior to joining MPI, Chishti was director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE). Chishti serves on the boards of the National Immigration Law Center, New York Immigration Coalition, and the Asian American Federation. He is a 1994 recipient of the New York State Governor’s Award for Outstanding Asian Americans and a 1995 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Chishti was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi; the University of Delhi; Cornell Law School; and the Columbia School of International Affairs.
Bitta Mostofi is a long-time immigrant rights advocate and human rights organizer. After graduating law school from DePaul University in Chicago, she practiced civil rights law with a particular focus on the discriminatory impact of immigration practices on Muslim or Middle Eastern immigrants. Shortly thereafter, she joined Safe Horizon and continued her legal practice representing immigrant crime victims, asylees, and others in both affirmative and defensive petitions before the immigration court. Along the way Bitta has continued her community organizing, working to increase awareness of global human rights injustices and the plight of refugees. In 2014, Bitta joined the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs to spearhead the IDNYC outreach campaign. She currently serves as acting commissioner for MOIA.
