Edward Alden
Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow
Council on Foreign Relations

Edward Alden is the Ross Distinguished Visiting Professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and the Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the book Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy. His first book, The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11, 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 the Financial Times and is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy.

Alexander Aleinikoff
University Professor and Director
Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility
The New School

Alex Aleinikoff is University Professor, and has served as Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School  since January 2017. Professor Aleinikoff has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. His most recent book is The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime (co-authored with Leah Zamore). His book Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship was published by Harvard University Press in 2002.  Professor Aleinikoff served as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees (2010-15). He was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he also served as dean and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University, and also taught on the law faculty of the University of Michigan. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then executive associate commissioner for programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Professor Aleinikoff received a J.D. from the Yale Law School and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts of Sciences in 2014.

Dr. Cris Beauchemin
Senior Researcher
Institut National d’Études Démographiques/French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED)

Dr. Cris Beauchemin is senior researcher at INED (Institut National d’Études Démographiques / French Institute for Demographic Studies). Prior to joining INED in 2015, he spent 3 years at the University of Montreal (Demography Department). Most of his research is about migration and connections between places of origin and destination. Covering both domestic and international migration, especially in the African context, his publications relate especially to trends of migration, migrants’ investments, return migration, transnational families, integration and migrants’ legal status. Most of his work relies on large scale surveys that he conducted: the Migration between Africa and Europe project (MAFE) and the Trajectories and origin survey in France (TeO).

Paula Gaviria Betancur
Member, United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement
Executive Director, Compaz Fundación in Colombia

Ms. Paula Gaviria Betancur is the Executive Director of Compaz Foundation. She is a lawyer and journalism specialist, with postgraduate degrees in public opinion and political marketing. Ms. Gaviria is a member of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. She is the former Presidential Advisor for Human Rights in Colombia and former Director of The Victims Unit. Ms. Paula Gaviria was actively involved in the drafting of the victims’ chapter on the Final Peace Agreement signed between the Colombian Government and the FARC-EP, where she advocated the inclusion of the victims’ voices in the dialogue process.

Richard A. Boswell
Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Global Programs
University of California, Hastings College of the Law

Richard A. Boswell is a Professor of Law & Associate Dean for Global Programs at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and directs the Immigrants Rights Clinic. He is a frequent lecturer in the U.S. and abroad on immigration law. He has testified before congress on numerous occasions. Professor Boswell is the author of numerous books and law review articles in the immigration field. He is the author of Essential of Immigration Law (5th ed. 2020) and Immigration Law and Procedure: Cases and Materials (5th. ed. 2018). He is also a co-author of Refugee Law and Policy: a Comparative and International Approach (5th. ed. 2018). Professor Boswell served as co–editor-in-chief of the Clinical Law Review and was president of the Clinical Legal Education Association as of its founding members. Professor Boswell also has worked in a number of countries (the West Bank and Gaza, Latin America, and most recently, Haiti) consulting on projects involving the rule of law.  He is currently a Special Master for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in the nationwide class action Catholic Social Services v. Garland involving problems in implementation of the immigration amnesty of 1986.

Professor Geoff Gilbert
Professor of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, University of Essex Director of the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network

Geoff Gilbert is a Professor of International Human Rights & Humanitarian Law in the School of Law and Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. He was Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Refugee Law from 2002-15 and is now co-Editor-in-Chief since September 2019; he also sits on the Advisory Board. In July 2020, he was made the inaugural Chair of the Global Academic Interdisciplinary Network Secretariat, following the 2019 Global Refugee Forum. In 2014 he was appointed a consultant to UNHCR (with Anna Magdalena Rüsch) on Rule of Law: Engagement for Solutions. In 2017, again with Anna Magdalena, they were commissioned by the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW, to write Creating Safe Zones and Safe Corridors in Conflict Situations: Providing protection at home or preventing the search for asylum? Under an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award 2017-18, he worked with UNHCR on the political participation of refugees in their country of nationality and on exclusion and national security. UNHCR then invited him, first, to participate in the Thematic Discussions on the Global Compact on Refugees and then to attend the Formal Consultations, contributing orally or in writing as appropriate; he was the only academic given access by UNHCR to the Formal Consultations. During 2018-20, he was the External Expert with Anna Magdalena Rüsch on the upgrade to EASO’s Exclusion module. In 2020-21, UNHCR appointed him along with Anna Magdalena Rüsch to evaluate its Rights Mapping tool. He is currently evaluating the Protection of Refugees’ Fundamental Rights during the Pandemic for the COVID-19 Global Evaluation Coalition. In 2009 he was elected a Bencher of the Middle Temple and was called in February 2010.

Ninette Kelly
Former Senior Officer
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

Ninette Kelley is a former Senior Officer in UNHCR who has recently completed a book for UNHCR to commemorate the 70th anniversaries of the creation of the Office (2020) and of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (2021).  She authored the forthcoming UNHCR book, People Forced to Flee: History, Change and Challenge that looks back and reflects forward: drawing on the lessons of history to probe how we can improve responses to forced displacement. She joined UNHCR in 2002 and served in several senior management positions both at Headquarters and in the field. Kelley has also held various policy and consultative roles with international humanitarian agencies focusing on development and refugee issues. In Canada she served eight years on the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).  She is the author of The Making of the Mosaic: The History of Canadian Immigration Policy, University of Toronto Press, 2nd edition, October 2010 (with Michael Trebilcock) and has published in the areas of human rights law, citizenship, refugee protection, gender-related persecution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.  She is a lawyer by training.

Susan Martin
Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita of International Migration
School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University

Susan Martin is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  She also serves as a non-resident fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at the New School. She was the founder and director of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration and chaired the Thematic Working Group on Environmental Change and Migration for the Knowledge Partnership in Migration and Development (KNOMAD) at the World Bank. Prior to joining Georgetown’s faculty, Dr. Martin was the Executive Director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, which was mandated by statute to advise the President and Congress on U.S. immigration and refugee policy. She received her PhD in the History of American Civilization from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Martin has authored or edited a dozen books and numerous articles and book chapters.  She serves on the boards of Jesuit Refugee Service USA and the Center for Migration Studies.

Hiroshi Motomura
Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law
Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP)
UCLA School of Law

Hiroshi Motomura is the Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, where he also serves as the Faculty Co-Director of the law school’s new Center for Immigration Law and Policy.  Hiroshi is the author of Immigration Outside the Law (2014), Americans in Waiting (2006), and numerous influential articles on immigration and citizenship.  He is also the co-author of two law school casebooks: Immigration and Citizenship: Process and Policy (9th ed. 2021) and Forced Migration: Law and Policy (2d ed. 2013).  Before joining the UCLA law faculty, Hiroshi taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was Nicholas Doman Professor of International Law, and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he was Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law.  He received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014 and the UCLA School of Law’s Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2021.  He is one of 26 law professors in the United States profiled in What the Best Law Teachers Do (2013).  Hiroshi is a founding director of the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (RMIAN), and he was a director of the National Immigration Law Center from 2011 through 2020. He is now at work on a book on the future of migration law and policy, supported in part by a Guggenheim Fellowship. The first phase of this project appeared in 2020 in the Cornell Law Review as an article, The New Migration Law: Migrants, Refugees, and Citizens in an Anxious Age.

Jacquelyn Pavilon
Deputy Director
Center for Migration Studies

Jacquelyn Pavilon is the Deputy Director at the Center for Migration Studies. She is a labor economist who received her PhD in Economics from Georgetown University in spring 2021. Her research focuses on migration, forced displacement, and immigration policy. From 2018-2021, she worked as a Research Consultant at the World Bank on various projects regarding the economics of international migration and a comparative analysis of worldwide governance. She also has worked in Kenya for the Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development, and Evaluation on projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation regarding digital financial inclusion technology for development. Before starting her doctoral program, she served as the International Communications Coordinator for the Jesuit Refugee Service International based in Rome, Italy, with frequent field visits to refugee settings, prior to which she was a corporate mathematician in applied probability and algorithmic design. She received her BS in Mathematics and BA in International Relations and Political Science from Loyola University Chicago in 2012.

Giovanni Peri
Director
Global Migration Center

Giovanni Peri is Professor of Economics at UC Davis and Director of the Global Migration Center, a multi-disciplinary research center focused on migrations.  He is Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research focuses on the economic determinants and consequences of international migrations. He has published extensively in Academic Journals and has received grants from the Mac Arthur Foundation, the Russel Sage Foundation, the World Bank, and the National Science Foundation.  His research is often featured in media outlets such as The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR news.

Michele Pistone
Professor of Law, Villanova University, Charles Widger School of Law
Founder and Founding Faculty Director, VIISTA: Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies Training for Advocates
Director, Clinic for Asylum Refugees & Emigrant Services (CARES)

Professor Michele R. Pistone has been a Professor of Law at Villanova University since 1999.  She founded the Law School’s in-house Clinical Program and founded and directed the Clinic for Asylum, Refugee and Emigrant Services (CARES). She is now leading the Villanova University’s Strategic Initiative Group on Immigration.  Professor Pistone has also taught at Georgetown University Law Center, twice as a Visiting Professor at American University Washington College of Law and as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Malta. 

Professor Pistone is an internationally recognized scholar in immigration and refugee protection, Catholic Social Thought, legal and online education.  Professor Pistone served as Associate Editor of the Journal on Migration and Human Security, a publication of the Center for Migration Studies.  She is an Expert Advisor on migration to the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations, an Adjunct Fellow with the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, and a Fellow at the Institute for the Advancement of American Legal System’s (IAALS), Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.   She is the winner of the highly competitive, national JM Kaplan Innovation Prize in 2019 for her ground-breaking work, winner of the 2020 Meyer Faculty Award in Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship, and was awarded the Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Award for Public Service.

Pistone is a leading scholar on and proponent of online legal education.  Professor Pistone designed and created the first-ever online certificate program to train immigrant advocates, VIISTA. Professor Pistone is the Founder of the AALS Section on Technology, Law and Legal Education and was awarded the Section’s inaugural Award in 2020.  She created a new course design methodology focused on Student-Centered Design, which she has presented on to more than a thousand law professors.  She also created a 3-day Bootcamp: Designing Your Law School Couse, which she has taught to close to 200 law professors.

Professor Pistone’s research focus on technological innovations in the practice of law and in legal education, asylum and refugee law, immigration law, migration, clinical education, and Catholic social thought. Throughout her career, she has written many articles, book chapters and reports.  Among her many publications, she is co-author of Disrupting Law School: How disruptive innovation will revolutionize the legal world, and Stepping Out of the Brain Drain: Applying Catholic Social Teaching in a New Era of Migration (Lexington Books 2007).

Professor Pistone is a leader in advocating for the incorporation of online technologies and learning sciences in law school teaching and has organized four TEDxVillanovaU conferences. Prior to joining the Villanova faculty in 1999, Professor Pistone was a teaching fellow in the asylum clinic (Center for Applied Legal Studies) at Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Pistone received her B.S. cum laude New York University, her J.D. cum laude from St. John’s University School of Law, and her LL.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center. At St. John’s, she was a member of the St. John’s Law Review. Before joining the Villanova faculty in 1999, she was an associate in the corporate and telecommunications departments at Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York City and Washington, D.C., and the Legal Director of Human Rights First in Washington, D.C., where she emerged as a leading advocate for justice in the immigration law system.

Ahmed S. Rahman
Associate Professor of Economics
Lehigh University

Ahmed S. Rahman is an Associate Professor of Economics at Lehigh University, and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics. His research areas include economic growth, economic history, immigration, and the economics of education. Some of his current work focuses on the wage and employment effects of immigration on native workers, the effects of peers and teachers on college student performance, and the impacts of different experiences in military service on private-sector employment. Prior to joining the Lehigh faculty, Professor Rahman was an Associate Professor at the United States Naval Academy.

Eric Schwartz
President
Refugees International

Eric Schwartz became President of Refugees International in June 2017. Eric has had a three-decade career focused on international refugee, humanitarian, and human rights issues. Between 2009 and 2011, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration. As Assistant Secretary, he strengthened the State Department’s humanitarian advocacy around the world, initiated and implemented critical enhancements to the U.S. refugee resettlement program, and raised the profile of global migration issues in U.S. foreign policy. In the 1990s, he was the senior human rights and humanitarian official at the National Security Council, managing humanitarian responses to crises in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. He also served as the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery after the 2004 Asian Tsunami; as Washington Director of Asia Watch (now the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch) between 1986 and 1989, and Staff Consultant to the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs (between 1989 and 1993), among other positions in the U.S. government, at the UN and in the non-profit sector. Just prior to arriving at Refugees International, Eric served a six-year term as Dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. During much of that period, he also served on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and, ultimately, as the Commission’s vice chair. He holds a law degree from New York University School of Law, a Master of Public Affairs degree from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Hon. Mimi Tsankov
President, National Association of Immigration Judges*

Mimi Tsankov is an Immigration Judge at the New York Federal Plaza Immigration Court.  In the past 15 years presiding at Immigration Courts in New York, Colorado, and California, she has held a variety of national leadership roles including Pro Bono Liaison Judge, contributing editor to the Immigration Judge Benchbook, Chair, Immigration Court – Board of Immigration Appeals Precedent Committee, Mentor Judge, and Juvenile Docket Best Practices Committee Chair.  She is currently the elected President of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) (2021 – 2023).  

In her personal capacity, she has been elected to the Federal Bar Association (FBA) Board of Directors, and serves as Immediate Past President of the FBA Southern District of New York (SDNY) Chapter.  She is a prior Chair of the FBA national International Law Section. Presently she serves on the Board of the Judicial Division and the Diversity and Inclusion Committee.  In Fall 2020, she co-chaired a national law student three-part webinar program entitled, Racial Equality and the SDGs: A Certificate Training Program for Law Students.  This program was accessible to all law students, nationwide.  In Spring 2021, she launched an International Courts Topical Webinar Series at the FBA.

At the American Bar Association (ABA), Judge Tsankov is Secretary of the Judicial Division National Conference of Administrative Law Judges (NCALJ), serves as Liaison to the ABA Commission on Immigration, and has an ABA Presidential Appointment to the United Nations Department of Global Communications, in her capacity as President of the NAIJ.*

Judge Tsankov is co-chair of the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ) Immigration Law Committee, and Vice President of Publications, in her capacity as President of the NAIJ.*.  She serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Fordham Law School in New York.  Judge Tsankov publishes regularly in peer-reviewed, and general interest journals.  She speaks regularly before members of the immigration law community at international, national, and regional conferences.

*DISCLAIMER:  The author is the President of the National Association of Immigration Judges.  The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Department of Justice, the Attorney General, or the Executive Office for Immigration Review.   The views represent the author’s personal opinions, which were formed after extensive consultation with the membership of NAIJ.

Dr. Peter J. Warrian
Distinguished Research Fellow
Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto

Dr. Peter J. Warrian is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.  He currently leads an international research team for a joint project of the ILO and the Vatican on AI, Robotics and the Future of Work. He was formerly Research Director of the United Steelworkers of America. From 1992-94 he was Assistant Deputy Minister of Finance and Chief Economist of the Province of Ontario. He is Chair of the Governing Council of Regis College, the Jesuit Graduate School of Theology at the University of Toronto. He is a graduate of the University of Waterloo and the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2020 he was named to the Order of Canada.

Jamie Winders
Editor-in-Chief, International Migration Review
Professor of Geography and Director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, Syracuse University

Jamie Winders is Editor in Chief of International Migration Review, the flagship journal in migration studies. Within the social sciences, she is best known for her interdisciplinary work on international migration and contributions to the study of race, labor and social reproduction. Winders is also associate editor of cultural geographies. Her long-standing research interests focus on interactions between changing patterns of immigrant settlement and racial/cultural politics, particularly in the context of new immigrant destinations. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and is Professor of Geography and Director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute (ASPI) at Syracuse University, where she has taught since 2004. As ASPI’s Founding Director, she oversees interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives focused on the technology/design, policy/governance, and societal impacts of autonomous systems/artificial intelligence and their varied uses in the world around us. Winders has also been involved in a number of interdisciplinary research and teaching initiatives in fields from environmental studies and science to landscape studies and art history. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Russell Sage, among other sources.