NEWPORT, R.I. - For better and for worse, America's borders have always been highly porous. Far from being a new and unprecedented danger to America, the illicit underside of globalization is actually an old
American tradition dating back centuries. Peter Andreas, professor in the department of political science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, argues that our "smuggler nation" not only subverts U.S. laws but also helped to fuel America's evolution from a remote British colony to the world's pre-eminent superpower.
Andreas will expound on his research when he presents "Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America" on Tuesday, March 5 at 6:30 p.m. in Salve Regina's DiStefano Lecture Hall, located in the Antone Academic Center on Lawrence Ave. Presented by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, the lecture is free and open to the public. As seating is limited, those interested in attending are asked to RSVP to pellcenter@salve.edu or 401-341-2927.
In tracing America's long and often tortuous relationship with the murky underworld of smuggling, Andreas provides a much-needed antidote to today's hyperbolic depictions of out-of-control borders and growing global crime threats. Urgent calls by politicians and pundits to regain control of the nation's borders suffer from a severe case of historical amnesia, nostalgically implying that they were ever actually under control. This is pure mythology, says Andreas.
Andreas was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. He has written numerous books, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.