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The future of borders in a dis-integrating world
Event Information
Drawing from his latest book, When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Tragedy and the Future of Borders, journalist Edward Alden will outline the recent history of border control, focusing primarily on the United States. Alden argues that the failure of governments to address persistent domestic challenges have led to a growing, and increasingly damaging, reliance on border restrictions to deal with threats that can be recast as external.
Speaker
Edward Alden, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
Edward Alden’s career spans more than three decades in journalism, thinks tanks, and academia. He is the Ross Distinguished Visiting Professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.
His latest book, co-authored with Laurie Trautman, is When the World Closed Its Doors: The Covid-19 Pandemic and the Future of Borders, which was published by Oxford University Press in January. His other books include Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy, and The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11, which was a finalist for the Lukas Book Prize for narrative nonfiction. He has directed several CFR-sponsored independent task forces, including the 2018 report “The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and U.S. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century” and the 2009 report “U.S. Immigration Policy.” He was previously Washington bureau chief for Financial Times and is a columnist for Foreign Policy.