Foreigners, Refugees, and the Ethics of Minority

This class interrogates the legal and ethical definitions of persons and homelands by examining the relationship between concepts of native and foreigner, hospitality and neighbour, refuge and exile, minority and majority. We will adopt historical, philosophical, and legal perspectives and take the Jewish historical experience of exile and minority as a jumping off point for discussing the contemporary refugee and migration crisis. The goal of this class is to contextualize liberal democratic debates over rights to migration and mobility with historical religious and moral sources as well as to explore the possibilities for social integration of difference within pluralism.