PROFESSOR KUNAL PARKER
News Briefs
News Briefs Professor Parker Named National Humanities Center Fellow
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PROFESSOR ANTHONY ALFIERI WITH PASTOR CLAYTON HODGE, GREATER ST. PAUL A.M.E. CHURCH
MI A MI LAW maga zi ne | FA LL 201 4
rofessor Kunal Parker, whose teaching areas and research interests include American legal history, estates and trusts, immigration and nationality law, and property, was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the National Humanities Center. He will be in residence in North Carolina at the Center during the 2014-2015 academic year, completing his book on the history of U.S. immigration and
citizenship law from the colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. “The book joins the disparate histories of immigrants, Native Americans, blacks, women, the poor, Latino Americans, and Asian Americans with a view to rethinking the conventional historiography of U.S. citizenship and immigration,” said Parker. “During the year, I will also begin a new book on the intellectual history of conservatism.” The National Humanities Center is a privately incorporated independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. Since 1978 the Center has awarded fellowships to more than 1,300 scholars in the humanities, whose work at the Center has resulted in the publication of more than 1,500 books in all fields of humanistic study. Each Fellow works on an individual research project and has the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures, and conferences at the Center. Parker, a Dean’s Distinguished Scholar at Miami Law, holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University, and a J.D. and B.A. from Harvard University.
Law Students Caring for the Community
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he Center for Ethics and Public Service’s Environmental Justice Program engaged passionately with the residents of the West Grove to block the relocation of a Coral Gables Trolley maintenance garage to a historic and predominantly Afro-Caribbean-American residential neighborhood. In the course of research, students from the Center made a second more unsettling discovery—an incinerator
located a few blocks away had dispersed toxic chemicals in parks throughout Miami. “The Environmental Justice Project fellows and interns have conducted tremendous fact-investigation,” said CEPS Director and Founder and Director of the Historic Black Church Program, Professor Anthony V. Alfieri. “Students have learned aspects and applications of environmental, administrative, and civil rights law, and presented their research to the community at risk.” The Center continues to work with the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance of Black Churches and others in a legal campaign to oppose the trolley garage and to investigate the public health impact of the trash incinerator.