January 28, 2014: In his annual State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his intent to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He called upon Congress to lift the restrictions on transferring detainees, stating that “we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals and…

The oral history process begins far before the interview starts. The dialogues are far longer than the soundbite portraits they often become. The process by which a lead – possibly just a name or a phone number – becomes a historical source, is incredibly personal and fraught. A person’s memories are a vast and interesting…

My classmate and I recently sat down with Harvard Law Professor Deborah Anker for an interview on the role of immigration law in the Haitian refugee crisis at Guantanamo. One of the first court cases that jumped to Anker’s mind was the Supreme Court case Jean v. Nelson (1985). Decided a few years before the crisis, the…

January 15, 1993: The commencement of Operation Able Manner saw U.S. Coast Guard and naval ships patrolling the Windward Passage, with the mission of interdicting Haitian migrants trying to make their way from Haiti to Cuba by boat. The Operation lasted until November 1994: in that time over 25,000 Haitians were interdicted. January 12, 2014:…

Those of us in the UNCG Public History program who have been working on the Guantánamo Public Memory Project spent the month of November and beginning of December finalizing GTMO & GSO, our cohort’s way of tying the underlying themes of the national traveling exhibit to our community. After months of hard work it was…

In creating our digital exhibit (entitled “GTMO in MSP”) that will accompany the Guantánamo Public Memory Project when it comes to St. Paul, MN, my group focused on the surveillance and detention of immigrant populations in Minneapolis and St. Paul as a way to connect the local context to the issues surrounding Guantánamo. One of…

As a current graduate student in History at the University of Minnesota, my friends and family from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York often ask me what it’s like here in the Twin Cities. I find myself thinking of the Chain of Lakes a few miles from my apartment; my favorite local places to study…

  Those of us in academia generally acknowledge the ongoing state of U.S. empire. However, in high school, and even some colleges and universities, colonialism and imperialism are taught as temporal periods. The Age of Imperialism, as it’s usually called, allegedly ended in the early 20th century. In actuality, the United States has continued to…

A few weeks ago, as I was standing outside Target on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, an elderly woman approached me and shared her life experiences in the Twin Cities. She told me something that has been troubling me since our conversation. I asked the woman how she likes living in the Twin Cities and her…

December 05, 2013: The Obama administration sends two more GTMO detainees to Algeria. Belkacem Bensayah and Djamel Ameziane follow two other detainees transferred to Algeria this year. Both of the newly transferred men have expressed fear of facing persecution in Algeria. December 12, 1972: A group of Haitian ‘boat people’ arrive in South Florida on…