Sunday, Sept, 10, 2023
Shaw Research Library
FREE
We are all too accustomed to political leaders declaring “Our country is full.” The United Nations has tried since the Second World War to assure the inalienable rights of refugees in the face of civil unrest, escalating wars, and the scourge of climate change, but in the end, nations control their borders.
Athenaeum Proprietor Janet Polasky’s new book, Asylum between Nations Refugees in a Revolutionary World, just published by Yale University Press, explores alternatives to fortifying borders in the cities and smaller nations that have sheltered refugees throughout modern history. The neighboring port cities of Hamburg and Altona, the Swiss Cantons, and the newly independent nation of Belgium, like Cities of Sanctuary today, not only offered asylum between nations, but prospered. Their open doors beckon as an alternative to restrictive immigration policies.
Join us on Sunday, September 10at 3:30 at the Athenaeum for a discussion with the author, Janet Polasky, Presidential Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. Copies of the book will be available for sale by RiverRun Books.
This talk is in the third-floor Shaw Research Library.
Please, RSVP at 603-431-2538.