Why History Matters: Immigration

In this special episode, we share a recording of a UCLA event titled Why History Matters: Immigration, sponsored by the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History as well as the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Moderated by Dean of the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, Abel Valenzuela, this event features a discussion between UCLA professors Kelly Lytle- Hernández, Ahilan Arulanantham, and Rubén Hernández-León. Our experts consider the fraught and often racist history of immigration policy in the U.S. as well as the immigration pathways and policy today. Kelly Lytle- Hernández is Professor and Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair of History, with appointments in History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA. As one of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she was named a MacArthur Genius Fellow in 2019. She is also an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she sits on the Pulitzer Prize Board. She is the author of multiple award-winning books, including Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands (W. W. Norton, 2022). Her newest book, Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control, will be published by W. W. Norton in late 2026. Ahilan Arulanantham is Professor from Practice and co-director of Miñana Family Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. In addition to his teaching, Ahilan maintains an active litigation practice. Prior to joining UCLA, Ahilan was senior counsel at the ACLU in Los Angeles, where he worked for two decades. In 2016, Ahilan was named a MacArthur Foundation Genius Fellow. Rubén Hernández-León is Professor of Sociology at UCLA, Director of the UCLA Latin American Institute, and Co-Chair of the Master of Arts in Latin American Studies program at UCLA. He previously directed the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies (2009-2021). His most recent book, Skills of the “Unskilled”: Work and Mobility among Mexican Migrants (UC Press, 2015), co-authored with Jacqueline Hagan and Jean-Luc Demonsant, received the best book award (co-winner) from the Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility of the American Sociological Association in 2016. His research focuses on new developments in Mexico-U.S. migration and the role of the migration industry in international migration.