By Daniel C. Dennett

From the preface: Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has always fascinated me, but over the years I have found a surprising variety of thinkers who cannot conceal their discomfort with his great idea, ranging from nagging skepti­cism to outright hostility. I have found not just lay people and religious thinkers, but secular philosophers, psychologists, physicists, and even biol­ogists who w'ould prefer, it seems, that Darwin were wrong. This book is about why Darwin’s idea is so powerful, and why it promises—not threat­ens—to put our most cherished visions of life on a new foundation.

NY. Touchstone.1995. 568p. CONTAINS MARK-UP

By G. J. Warnock

From the introduction: “The aim of this essay is to provide a compendious survey of moral philosophy in English since about the beginning of the present century. Fortunately, the tale that thus falls to be told is not in outline excessively complex, and can be seen as a quite intelligible sequence of distinguishable episodes……It will be found that my critical discussions of the major doc­trines to be surveyed are (I fear) somewhat uniformly hostile; and I have brought in, in the later pages of my essay, perhaps more controversial matter than would ordinarily be looked for in a mainly expository review. But I would defend this, if I had to, as lying in the nature of the case. For the case is, I believe, that the successive orthodoxies of moral philosophy in English in the present century have been, notwithstanding the often admirable acumen of their authors, remarkably barren. Certain questions about the nature and the basis of moral judgment which have been regarded, at least in the past, as centrally important have not only not been examined in recent theories; those theories have seemed deliberately to hold that, on those questions, there is nothing whatever that can usefully be said….”

Macmillan St. Martin’s Press. 1867. 88p.

By Thomas Bullfinch.

From thePublishers’ Preface: No new edition of Bulfinch’s classic work can be con­sidered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. “The Age of Fable” has come to be ranked with older books like “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” “The Arabian Nights,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and five or six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with which every one must claim some acquaintance before his education can be called really complete. Many readers of the present edition will probably recall coming in contact with the work as children, and, it may be added, will no doubt discover from a fresh perusal the source of numerous bits of knowledge that have remained stored in their minds since those early years. Yet to the majority of this great circle of readers and students the name Bulfinch in itself has no significance.

NY. Crown Publishers Avenel Books. 1978 1021p..

Translated by Joseph Smith Jr.

An account written by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates taken from the Plates of Nephi. Wherefore It Is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanltes; written to the Lamanites who are a remnant of the house of Israel; and also to Jew and Gentile: written by way of commandment, and also by the Spirit of prophecy and of revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed; to come forth by the gift and power of God unto the inter­pretation thereof: sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Gentile; the interpretation thereof by the gift of God.

An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also; which Is a record of the people of Jared; who were scattered at the time the Lord con­founded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to heaven; which is to shew unto the remnant of the House of Israel whut great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever; and also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations. And now if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men; wherefore condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the Judgment-seat of Christ.

Chicago. Press of Henry C. Often & Co.1905. 637p.

By Dennis Barone

In Beyond Memory, Dennis Barone uncovers the richness and diversity of the Italian Protestant experience and places it in the context of migration and political and social life in both Italy and the United States. Italian Protestants have received scant attention in the fields of Italian American studies, religious studies, and immigration studies, and through literary sources, church records, manuscript sources, and secondary sources in various fields, Barone introduces such forgotten voices as the Baptist Antonio Mangano, the Methodist Antonio Arrighi, and his great-grandfather Alfredo Barone, a Baptist minister to congregations in Italy and Massachusetts. Examining the complex histories of these and other Italian Protestants, Barone argues that Protestantism ultimately served as a means to negotiate between Old World and New World ways, even as it resulted in the double alienation of rejection by Roman Catholic immigrants and condescension by Anglo-Protestants. Though the book focuses on the years of high immigration (1890-1920), it also looks at precursors to post-reunification Protestants as well as Protestants in Italy today, now that the nation has become a country of in-migration.

NY. SUNY Press. 2016. 182p.

Speaking of the years since 1945, the writers of this Report on Torture remark: “Never has there been a stronger or more universal consensus on the total inadmissibility of the practice of torture; at the same time the practice of torture has reached epidemic proportions.” On Human Rights Day, 1972, Amnesty International launched a worldwide campaign against the systematic use of torture by governments.

Report on Torture contains authoritative discus­sions of the history of torture, problems of legal definition, the medical and psychological aspects of torture, legal remedies, and a country-by country inventory of the use of torture by many governments as a means of extracting information and exercising political and social control over their citizens. There is information here on sixty- two countries, including the United States, but Report on Torture stresses that "to criticize one government is not to praise another about which Amnesty has no information.”

NY. Farrar, Straus and Giraux.. 1975. 283p.

By Alan Greenspan

“This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world—the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It’s a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new chal­lenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world: how we got here, what were living through, and what lies over the horizon, for good and for ill. Where possible, I convey my understanding in the context of my own experiences. I do this out of a sense of responsibil­ity to the historical record, and so that readers will know where I’m coming from. The book is therefore divided into halves: the first half is my effort to retrace the arc of my learning curve, and the second half is a more objective effort to use this as the foundation on which to erect a conceptual framework for understanding the new global economy. Along the way I explore critical elements of this emerging global environment: the principles of governing it; the vast energy infrastructure that powers it; the global financial imbalances and dramatic shifts in world demographics that threaten it; and, despite its unquestioned success, the chronic concern over the justice of the distribution of its rewards. Finally, I bring together what we can reasonably conjecture about the makeup of the world economy in 2030.”

NY. Penguin. 2007. 561p.

By Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie began to write this book in April 1950; she finished it some fifteen years later when she was seventy-five years old. Any book written over so long a period must contain certain repetitions and in­consistencies and these have been tidied up under the watchful and sympathetic eye of her daughter Rosa­lind. Nothing of importance has been omitted, however: so, substantially, this is the autobiography as she would have wished it to appear. She ended it when she was seventy-five because, as she put it, “it seems the right moment to stop. Because, as far as life is concerned, that is all there is to say.”

NY. Ballantine Books. 1977. 660p.

By The Global Detention Project

Mexico has one of the largest immigration detention systems in the world, employing several dozen detention centres—euphemistically called estaciones migratorias—and detaining tens of thousands of people every year. Intense pressure from the United States and continuing migration from turmoil-wracked Central America have helped drive up detention numbers, which surpassed 180,000 in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic further stressed the country’s migration response. It temporarily released most detainees after the onset of the pandemic even as the United States continued deporting both Mexican and third-country nationals to Mexico. In late 2020, the country adopted reforms to its migration law prohibiting the detention of all children, though many observers expressed scepticism over whether it would be respected.

Geneva: Global Detention Project, 2021. 37p.

By  Christopher Horwood

Just as the world’s governments have, for some decades, waged war on international drug trafficking, there are increasing signals that global authorities have embarked on a major offensive against the growing phenomenon of migrant smuggling in addition to their existing fight against human trafficking.1 One of the most unambiguous of these signals came in April 2015, when Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Union’s top official for migration,2 told a news conference: “we will take action now. Europe is declaring war on [migrant] smugglers. Europe is united in this effort. We will do this together with our partners outside Europe. We will work together because smuggling is not a European problem — it is a global one.”3 Largely because of its clandestine nature, there is insufficient data available to gauge the global extent of migrant smuggling. Still, existing research offers some hints: according to one recent estimate, some 2.5 million migrants across the world used smugglers in 2016, generating an economic return of at least $5.5 billion dollars.4 ‘Since the migration crisis in 2015 the migrant smuggling business has established itself as a large, lucrative and sophisticated criminal market.’5 This paper, like others before it, argues that the main motivation behind the new offensive against migrant smugglers is not only the much-vaunted concern for the safety and protection of migrants and refugees6 (Avramopoulos prefaced his declaration with the words ‘one more life lost [at sea] is one too many’) but also the fact that migrant smugglers are the main vector and means for irregular migration. Rightly or wrongly, irregular migration is portrayed, even if disingenuously, by governments and many electorates as undesirable from a socio-political, security and economic perspective, and as a potential cause of future social unrest and political disruption.   

Geneva: Mixed Migration Centre, 2019. 78p.

Over the last 30 years, thousands of dead Latino migrant bodies have been found along the United States-Mexico boundary. These casualties are directly related to the Border Patrol’s “prevention through deterrence” (PTD) policing strategy, which funnels crossing migrants into remote and deadly deserts, mountains, and waterways. In response, local residents have created various formal and informal organizations to help provide life-saving aid to vulnerable crossing migrants. However, President Trump and Border Patrol agents have sought to criminalize and stop the work of humanitarian aid volunteers at the border. The data presented in this brief reveal that the American public overwhelmingly (87%) opposes—including the vast majority of Republicans (71%)—the criminalization of humanitarian aid workers at the border. 

Los Angeles: UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative, 2020. 6p.

The Trump administration implemented a total of 363 policy changes to interior enforcement with the overarching goal of subjecting all undocumented immigrants to enforcement actions. President Biden assumed office following significant commitments to implement changes to immigration enforcement, to limit enforcement activities, and to reduce the hardship experienced by noncitizens and their families.

This report analyzes some of the most consequential changes to immigration enforcement implemented by the Trump administration, the changes that President Biden committed to making during his campaign and transition, and the progress that his administration has achieved in its first 100 days. The report concludes with recommendations for additional changes that the administration should prioritize in working to create a fairer and more humane system of immigration enforcement.

Washington, DC: American immigration Council, 2021. 33p.

By  Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson 

This policy proposal is a proposal from the author(s). As emphasized in The Hamilton Project’s original strategy paper, the Project was designed in part to provide a forum for leading thinkers across the nation to put forward innovative and potentially important economic policy ideas that share the Project’s broad goals of promoting economic growth, broad-based participation in growth, and economic security. The author(s) are invited to express their own ideas in policy proposals , whether or not the Project’s staff or advisory council agrees with the specific proposals. This policy proposal is offered in that spirit.  

  Immigration is good for the US economy and for the fiscal picture at the federal level, but some local areas experience adverse fiscal impacts when new immigrants arrive. Edelberg and Watson propose a transparent system for redistributing resources from the federal government to these localities. Local areas would receive $2,500 annually for each adult immigrant who arrived to the US within the past five years without a college degree—those more likely to generate negative fiscal flows at the subnational level. The funds would take the form of unrestricted transfers to local educational agencies through the existing Impact Aid program and to Federally Qualified Health Centers. This support would help to offset educational, health, and other costs to local areas associated with immigrant inflows, and more equitably share the overall fiscal and economic benefits of immigration.   

Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution and The Hamilton Project , 2022.   26p.

By Kathleen O’Connor, Claire Thomas-Duckwitz, and  Guillermina Gina Nuñez-Mchiri  

The 1951 Refugee Convention of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) defines a refugee as someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country." Further, the UNHCR is particularly concerned with refugees in Latin America and the Caribbean and uses the term refugee to describe persons fleeing from violence in Central America (U.N. High Commission for Refugees 2014). Thus, in this document, we refer to immigrants detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (“Dilley”), as refugees because they have been persecuted by virtue of their membership in a social group, are outside their country of origin, are fleeing extreme violence, and fear returning to their countries of origin, which provided no protection from violence and persecution. Throughout the report, refugees who agreed to speak with the team and to an assessment of mental health outcomes are also referred to as study participants, participants, or respondents. During fieldwork from July 22 to July 24, 2015, a team of mental and behavioral health specialists collected the following data at Dilley, at the Greyhound Bus Station in San Antonio, and at the Hospitality House, a shelter in San Antonio where refugees are housed temporarily en route to resettlement areas throughout the United States  

 Cambridge, MA: Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), 2015. 82p.

By George Fishman

  • Juveniles commit a large number of serious offenses. In 2020, there were 1,353 known juvenile homicide offenders. In 2019, juveniles constituted 21 percent of all arrests for robbery, 20 percent for arson, 17 percent for car theft, 12 percent for burglary, 10 percent for larceny-theft and weapons offenses, eight percent for murder, and seven percent for aggravated assault. In 2012, the last year for which data is available, juveniles accounted for 14 percent of all arrests for forcible rape. • Despite the successful framing of DREAMers and DACA recipients as young people with no criminal records, it turns out that many were affiliated with gangs and many had arrest records when granted DACA benefits, and many others saw their DACA status terminated because of criminal activity. As USCIS has admitted, “[t]he truth is that we let those with criminal arrests for sexually assaulting a minor, kidnapping, human trafficking, child pornography, or even murder be provided protection from removal.” • Juvenile perpetrators are much more likely to be processed through a juvenile justice system than a criminal court. The Los Angeles County District Attorney made the decision (still largely in effect) to not send any juveniles to criminal court, no matter the gravity of their crimes. • Most juveniles adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court are not placed into any sort of out-of-home detention, including for such offenses as aggravated assault and robbery. • Congress has determined that all aliens (regardless of their immigration status) are subject to removal upon conviction for a wide range of crimes. Congress has also determined that aliens are subject to mandatory detention and are ineligible for a wide range of immigration benefits and relief upon conviction for a wide range of crimes.

Washington, DC: Center for Immigration Studies, 2022. 33p.   

By The Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School and  United Stateless (USL) 

  Statelessness — the condition of lacking citizenship or nationality in any country of the world — affects more than 10 million people globally. In the United States, conservative estimates put the number of stateless persons at over 200,000. Given that the U.S. provides citizenship to people born on the territory, nearly all stateless persons within the U.S. were born elsewhere. However, the U.S. immigration framework is silent with respect to statelessness, in effect leaving stateless people unrecognized, unprotected and invisible before the law. As persons relegated to a life without legal status, stateless people in the United States are subject to being detained by immigration officials. Because they do not have a country of nationality where they can be deported to, stateless detainees have remained in immigration detention for months or years without any prospect of release, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and international human rights law. In some cases, after undergoing prolonged detention, stateless detainees have been forcibly deported to “third countries” (countries where they are not citizens), thereby perpetuating their condition of legal limbo and further depriving them of protection as required by international law. This report by the Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School, in partnership with the non-profit organization United Stateless (USL), documents how the U.S. government violates international law by subjecting stateless persons to prolonged, repeated and arbitrary detention. Drawing from interviews with impacted stateless individuals and experts on statelessness, the report sets out specific recommendations for the U.S. government to bring its laws and policies in compliance with international human rights law.  

Chicago: The Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) of the University of Chicago Law School,    2022. 88p.

By Lilana Keith

Across Europe, people live and work while having irregular migration status, economically, socially and culturally enriching their communities and countries of residence. Undocumented migrants contribute directly and indirectly to social protection systems, as taxpayers, workers and informal carers. Undocumented workers are a key part of the domestic work and care workforce, caring for children, elderly and people with long-term social support and care needs, and enabling labour market participation and work-life balance.1 Nonetheless, states severely restrict access to social protection for people with temporary, precarious or irregular residence status. Although undocumented migrants face various economic and social risks and vulnerabilities, they are excluded from many of the basic mechanisms of social protection put in place to address vulnerabilities and provide a minimum social safety net, including access to subsidised housing and income security. Such exclusion compounds the risks of in-work poverty, destitution, homelessness, violence and exploitation – all of which undocumented migrants face due to discrimination linked to their residence status. Restrictions on access to social protection associated with a person’s residence permit can also be a major reason for people not being able to renew their permit, if the conditions of their permit require them to be financially independent without recourse to public social assistance. The European Commission notes that housing “has a major influence on immigrants’ employment options, educational opportunities, social interactions, residence situation, family reunification and citizenship rights”.2 Income security is scarce among undocumented migrants due to their precarious employment situations, which can include unsafe working conditions, low pay, long hours, job insecurity, and lack of sick leave.3

Brussels: PICUM, 2022. 38p.  

By David Goodhart  

The Government has steadied the ship in recent weeks after the Liz Truss misadventure. But if there is any chance of winning back some of the 2019 coalition, one condition of being competitive at the next election, the Government will need some visible policy progress in three big areas: NHS performance, levelling up and immigration (including stopping the Channel boats). This paper focuses on that third policy field. Attitudes to immigration have liberalised somewhat since Brexit ended free movement reinforced by the persistent publicity about labour shortages. But anxiety about immigration is likely to rise again sharply following the unprecedented post-Covid surge in legal net migration, with the illegal Channel boats as a backdrop, and the probable revival of the Reform party to highlight Conservative failed pledges on immigration.

• More.....

  The net immigration figure of 504,000 in the year to June, easily the largest ever annual increase, creates another headache for the Government but is mainly due to one-off factors—a post-Covid catch up on student migration (277,000) and a surge in mainly legal refugee inflows (276,000) which are unlikely to be repeated, including the large numbers from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. Only about 150,000 of the net migration figure is people coming on work visas (around 20%) but most of them and almost all the students will only be here temporarily. Notwithstanding this unsustainable surge, Britain’s post-Brexit immigration system is broadly striking the right balance. It is already more open than many comparable countries, with greater restrictions on most low paying jobs than in the EU era but with almost two-thirds of jobs subject to a potential work visa. Outside of some very specific areas, such as seasonal agricultural work, there is no case for more liberalisation, especially in the light of the unprecedented half a million number, but this paper makes some suggestions for further reform under three main headings, and concludes with an analysis of the Channel boats problem.  

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 23p.

Edited by Gianni Paganini, Margaret C. Jacob, and John Christian Laursen

Clandestine Philosophy examines the circulation and consequences of 'clandestine philosophical manuscripts', a genre that flourished in the eighteenth century and included forbidden works such as erotic texts, political pamphlets, satires of court life and of the nobility, forbidden religious texts, and books about alchemy and the occult. The editors have brought together leading experts on the history of European philosophy to explore the circulation of radical ideas during the eighteenth century and the social, political, and cultural impact they had on eighteenth-century society.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 449p.

Edited by Gale Burford, John Braithwaite and Valerie Braithwaite

In Restorative and Responsive Human Services, Gale Burford, John Braithwaite, and Valerie Braithwaite bring together a distinguished collection providing rich lessons on how regulation in human services can proceed in empowering ways that heal and are respectful of human relationships and legal obligations. The human services are in trouble: combining restorative justice with responsive regulation might redeem them, renewing their well-intended principles. Families provide glue that connects complex systems. What are the challenges in scaling up relational practices that put families and primary groups at the core of health, education, and other social services? This collection has a distinctive focus on the relational complexity of restorative practices. How do they enable more responsive ways of grappling with complexity than hierarchical and prescriptive human services? Lessons from responsive business regulation inform a re-imagining of the human services to advance wellbeing and reduce domination. Readers are challenged to re-examine the perverse incentives and contradictions buried in policies and practices. How do they undermine the capacities of families and communities to solve problems on their own terms? This book will interest those who harbor concerns about the creep of domination into the lives of vulnerable citizens. It will help policymakers and researchers to re-focus human services to fundamental outcomes at the foundation of sustainable democracies.

New York; London: Routledge, 2019. 261p.