Faculty

Profile

Alex Aleinikoff is the Executive Dean of The New School for Social Research and University Professor at The New School. He has served as Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility since January 2017.

Alex has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. His latest book, New Narratives on the Peopling of America (co-edited with Alexandra Delano), will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2024. He is also the author of The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (Stanford University Press, 2019, co-authored by Leah Zamore) and Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship ( Harvard University Press, 2002). He is a co-author of leading legal casebooks on immigration law and forced migration. He is currently working on several projects relating to climate migration and reform of the international protection regime.

Before coming to The New School, Alex was United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees from 2010-2015. He was Dean, Executive Vice President for Law Center Affairs, and a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center, and was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Law School. He served as Co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for President Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Alex received a JD from Yale Law School and a BA and honorary Doctorate of Laws from Swarthmore College. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014.

Degrees Held

JD Yale Law School
BA Swarthmore College

Recent Publications

BOOKS

The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime. Stanford University Press, 2019.

Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2002.

SELECTED RECENT ARTICLES AND MEDIA

Host of Tempest Tossed podcast and cohost of Entry Denied podcast

"U.S. Immigration Crackdowns Not Unusual During Times Of Crisis," WXXI, June 21, 2020.

"Supreme Court Rules Trump Offered No Sufficient Reason to Ax DACA," NY1, June 19, 2020. 

"The Fragility of the Global Mobility Regime," Public Seminar, May 19, 2020.

"Trump's War on Asylum," Public Seminar, November 13, 2019.

"In the Shadow of Auschwitz," Public Seminar, October 25, 2019.

"Border Tragedies," Public Seminar, January 20, 2019.

"Here’s How to Handle Central American Migrants — Like the Cuban Rafters and Soviet Jews Before Them," Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2019.

"Supreme Court Rules Trump Offered No Sufficient Reason to Ax DToward a Global System of Human Mobility: Three Thoughts," American Journal of International Law, April 2017.

"The Present, Past, and Future of Refugee Protection and Solutions: Camps, Comprehensive Plans, and Cyber-Communities," Emory International Law Review, 2017.

"Reflections on the Worldwide Refugee 'Crisis,'" UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, Winter 2017 (edited transcript of live symposium at UCLA School of Law)

"This is how Private Citizens Could Help Refugees Come to the US," Time Ideas, February 2017

"Trump's Executive Order: Banning Immigration and Refugee Admissions," Public Seminar, January 2017

"The Trump Executive Orders on Immigration Enforcement," Public Seminar, January 2017

Research Interests

Immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law

Awards And Honors

Inducted into the National Academy of the Arts and Sciences, 2014