Meet the Speaker: Robin Jacobson

Robin Jacobson teaches race, religion, state politics, and the politics of detention. Her writing focuses on immigration and the role of race in immigration politics, the debate over birthright citizenship, and the relationship between interest groups and immigration politics.

Her book, The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate over Immigration (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), explores the role of race in immigration politics. Other published articles on the topic include pieces on the debate over birthright citizenship, the relationship between the labor movement and other interest groups and immigration politics, and state laws about immigration. Her current collaborative project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, compares state responses to immigration from the last 19th century through the current moment in the Southwest and the Mid-Atlantic. She is also co-editor of the volume Faith and Race in American Political Life (University of Virginia Press, 2012).