[On December 14th, 1950, the United Nations adopted its Statute on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. So for the 75th anniversary of that important moment, this week I’ve AmericanStudied the UNHCR and other refugee stories, leading up to this weekend post on that fraught and crucial issue in 2025.]
I’m a couple weeks out from my annual Year in Review series, so watch this space for more extended reflections on what dominated the headlines in 2025; but it’s fair to say that no social or political issue did so more consistently than did the Trump administration’s capricious, cruel, and thoroughly unconstitutional treatment of refugees, asylum seekers, and every other form of immigrant arrival to the U.S. For me those stories weren’t just headlines, though: I saw them up close, through the ongoing experiences of an FSU first-year student and her family. They’re refugees from Venezuela who had been granted Temporary Protected Status, and over the course of just a few months they had that status ripped away by the administration, had a court re-grant it, had it taken away again, and continued to live with profound uncertainty about their immediate and long-term future. The student is one of the strongest I’ve taught in many years, and wrote an excellent final research paper for our first-year writing course on these issues and their many contemporary and historical contexts; she’d be a wonderful addition to any university and community. But in truth, while that fact offers a particularly striking contrast with Trump’s thoroughly awful identity, what’s happened and continues to happen to her and her family shouldn’t happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. I don’t know that I need to say any more about refugee stories in 2025 than that.
Holiday series starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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