Where:
Boston Athenæum
10 ½ Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108
Admission:
$Free with admission
Event website:
http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/events/4906/boston-roots-trump-anti-immigrant-playbook
President Trump’s immigration rhetoric has elicited outrage in Massachusetts, and especially in the vicinity of Harvard Yard (where Trump won just 4% of the vote). So, in Greater Boston, it may turn more than a few faces crimson to learn that—like basketball, the microwave oven, and public education—the intellectual playbook for anti-immigration policy was drafted right here in Massachusetts, by a small group of Harvard-educated Brahmin intellectuals led by Prescott Farnsworth Hall. Their work, which began in 1894, culminated exactly 100 years ago with the passage of the federal Immigration Act of 1917, opening a new epoch of national immigration policy.
In this lecture, author Neil Swidey will discuss the roots of Trump’s anti-immigration fervor and the surprisingly influential local characters behind it. He explored these connections, and their implications, in his Globe Magazine cover story earlier this year.
Registration is not required.
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The Athenæum's five galleried floors overlook the peaceful Granary Burying Ground, and, as Gamaliel Bradford wrote in 1931, "it is safe to say that [no library] anywhere has more an atmosphere of its own, that none is more conducive to intellectual aspiration and spiritual peace." The building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.