Duke-UNC 2025-2026 Keohane Lecture Series: Kelly Lytle Hernández “The Whites-Only Immigration Regime: 1896-1952”

“Join us for a public lecture by historian Kelly Lytle Hernández, the 2025-26 Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. In “The Whites-Only Immigration Regime: 1896-1952,” Hernández will discuss how between 1896 and 1952, U.S. federal authorities built a whites-only immigration system that banned, blocked and punished almost all non-white immigration to the United States. Hernández will detail why and how they did it, as well as indicate how their designs continue to shape the modern immigration system.

5:30-6:30 pm: Reception
6:30 pm: Talk

Kelly Lytle Hernández grew up in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during a period of rapidly expanding immigration enforcement, a formative experience that inspired her career‑long inquiry into race, policing, and the targeting of Mexicans and other Latinos by U.S. immigration authorities. Now one of the nation’s leading scholars on race, migration, and mass incarceration, she holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA and is the founder of Million Dollar Hoods, a research project mapping the fiscal and human costs of mass incarceration in Los Angeles.

Her award‑winning books include Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles. She is also a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of American Historians, and the Pulitzer Prizes Board.

Hosted by the Center for Documentary Studies and the Department of History. We warmly encourage in‑person attendance; however, those who wish to join virtually may register here to receive a Zoom link: https://forms.gle/6ynUZ87W5Kj3tSUu8.