17 June 2017- my interview with CSPAN3’s American History TV ran today on Syrian migrants in the United States during the First World War. The interview took place at the Organization of American Historians annual meeting in April in a series of tapings to commemorate the centenary of… Read More
14 June 2017- I’m pleased to announce that this Fall semester, I will begin a new tenure-track appointment in History at California State University, Stanislaus! In addition to teaching in Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and migration history I will develop a public history project on modern Assyrian… Read More
27 March 2017: a new brief piece of mine on teaching migration and refugee history appears on IEHS ONLINE, the website of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. My Spring 2017 course, Migrants and Refugees in the Middle East, meets Tuesday evenings, and it seems like… Read More
On April 4, Fresno State will host speakers from US CIS, a variety of organizations devoted to resettlement of Syrian refugees, as well as Dr. Keith Watenpaugh, historian of refugees and human rights at UC-Davis. The all-day event features expertise on all sides of the… Read More
10 March 2017: I recently did some research consulting with a content provider for AJ+ for the first part of his series on Syrian immigration to Boston. The film short is out now and does an excellent job of capturing some of the earliest moments… Read More
8 February 2017: Tropics of Meta: Historiography for the Masses has published my brief piece on Donald Trump’s 2017 Executive Order in relationship to the first “Muslim Ban” in American history: Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s Executive Order 2932 (1918). The piece can be read at this link: https://tropicsofmeta.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/what-we-can-learn-from-americas-other-muslim-ban-back-in-1918/ From the… Read More
1 February 2017: Trump’s January 27 Executive Order, colloquially understood as the #MuslimBan, sparked immediate protest at airports and initiated a series of federal court challenges which are ongoing. As a scholar of Middle Eastern migration I am watching these developments with trepidation. I have… Read More
22 December 2016: Fresno-area media outlet interviewed me for a short web video on the Syrian conflict and refugee resettlement in the Central Valley. The piece appears on GVWire.com and will be the first in a series dedicated to the covering Syrian asylees in Fresno. The… Read More
30 May 2016: last November I met with asylum officers at US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) to give a historical briefing of the Syrian conflict and to discuss the Syrian refugee movement. The meeting was facilitated by UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies,… Read More
18 November 2015: Today I met with US Citizenship and Immigration Services officers in the San Francisco Asylum Office to brief them on the Syrian conflict and some of the issues they will confront as they consider resettlement cases involving Syrian refugees. The meeting is… Read More
