Keep your eyes out for our next email, which will finalize the date for our next meeting in March. We aim to discuss the Gubernatorial candidates, take care of some club business, and update everyone on happenings around town.

In the meantime, there are some great things to do around town if you like history. Albany is blessed with a wealth of Professors (or professors to be), three of whom will be holding lectures on a variety of topics at one of our local libraries in the next month.
 

A History of Immigration Law: How We Got Here

Carlotta Wright de la Cal, PhD candidate, UC Berkeley

March 3, 6-7:30 pm
Edith Stone Room, Albany Community Center
1249 Marin Ave., Albany

Since the earliest days of the U.S., immigration and citizenship laws have reflected attitudes about race and belonging as well as the economic interests of people in power. Come learn about the historical roots of today’s immigration debates. Part of Path to Belonging, an exhibition and public conversation project celebrating local histories of migration.

Carlotta Wright de la Cal is a PhD candidate in History at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in immigration, legal, and labor history. Carlotta's dissertation examines how the expansion of railroad corporations in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands reshaped mobility patterns, labor recruitment, and border control in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Birthright Citizenship, Reconstruction, and Immigrant Rights Today
Greg Downs, Professor of History, UC Davis

April 8, 6-7:30 pm
Edith Stone Room, Albany Community Center
1249 Marin Ave., Albany

After the Civil War, the push to protect the rights of four million newly free people led to an expansive debate over who was a citizen. Over time, the Fourteenth Amendment’s definition of birthright citizenship would have massive implications for children of immigrants. This lecture will address the relevance of that history to battles over citizenship today. Part of Path to Belonging, an exhibition and public conversation project celebrating local histories of migration.

Greg Downs is professor and chair of History at UC Davis, author of four books on slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and another one forthcoming on Why Reconstruction Matters with Kate Masur. An Albany resident, he has been chair of the Social and Economic Justice Commission and the former Albany Policing Commission.

Palestine and the Palestinian People Before October 7th: Lecture 5
Barry Preisler, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Sonoma State

February 28, 2:30-4:30
North Berkeley Library, Meeting Room
1170 The Alameda, Berkeley

This series is an abbreviated version of Barry Preisler's semester-length course, “Israel, the Palestinians and US Foreign Policy,” which he taught for 25 years at Sonoma State University.

Barry Preisler is a political scientist who taught Middle East and Palestinian-Israeli conflict studies for 25 years at Sonoma State University and other California universities. He holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and a B.S. from the American University of Beirut.