A centralized, cross-school catalog of Harvard courses related to immigration, integration, and the legal and social implications of migration. This guide helps students navigate academic offerings from FAS, HGSE, HKS, HMS, and the Law School, and beyond.

Asian Americans and the Law

 Professor: William Lee
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course will explore the history of Asian Americans under the law. We will first address historical issues such as immigration in the 1800s and the Chinese Exclusion Act, state sponsored discrimination such as the Chinese Laundry and Pigtail Ordinance cases, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. We will then turn to contemporary events including accusations of espionage, employment discrimination, affirmative action and the Asian hate crimes. We will also address issues such as birthright citizenship and alien land laws that contemporary resonance. We intend that students who join the class will explore and understand the history of Asian immigration to the United States, the critical legal events in Asian American history and the contemporary issues affecting Asian Americans.

Bilingual Learners: Literacy Development and Instruction

 Professor: Paola Uccelli
Semester: Fall 2025
Description Designed for researchers and practitioners, this course focuses on the pressing issues related to bilingual students' language and literacy instruction, as well as policies guiding language and education at school. The term "bilingual" in this course is used to refer to students who have diverse and unequal experiences in more than one language, with a focus on those who speak or hear a language different from the societal language at home but who might receive bilingual or monolingual instruction at school. The course employs an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on sociocultural and educational theory and research to explore societal factors related to language, literacy, and academic achievement in the United States and in various international contexts. Together, we will examine questions related to the many modes of being bilingual/multilingual, the role of languages in society, and the impact of educational resources and policies on bilingual populations. The aims of this course are to investigate and understand how sociocultural contexts affect bilingual students' learning and identities, why literacy plays a crucial role in academic achievement, and which instructional implications are supported by the latest research with bilingual learners. The ultimate goal is to prepare students to contribute to the field in research-informed, yet innovative, ways. This course is intended for students who anticipate working with linguistically diverse populations as practitioners, curriculum designers, educational leaders, policymakers, or researchers.

Communication, Law and Social Justice 

 Professor: Alan Jenkins
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course will introduce students to the role that written, oral, and multi-media communications play in the development of American law and policy, with a focus on social issues and movements. Using as case studies advocacy for racial equity, criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, gun rights, environmental protection, reproductive justice, and economic opportunity, we will explore how change agents on multiple sides have used strategic framing and messaging, communications campaigns, and art and culture to influence - and in some instances transform - relevant law and policy. We will also examine the ethical rules and legal parameters that regulate attorneys' communications regarding pending litigation and broader legal advocacy. Class participation and a final exam will count for significant portions of students' final grades. Assigned material will include cases, legislation, legal scholarship, social science literature, and mass media works.

Comparative Citizenship and Migration Law

 Professor: Carmel Shachar 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description The movement of people across borders alongside questions of membership and belonging are high on the agenda worldwide. Political and legal battles over citizenship and immigration ensue. This course explores major developments in citizenship and migration law and policy from a comparative perspective. We will survey key debates and topics such as admission requirements; the main classifications of immigration (family, employment, and humanitarian categories); pertinent international legal agreements concerning refugees and asylum seekers; responses to climate-induced mobility; highly skilled migration; regional free movement agreements; steps to naturalization; civic integration tests; solidarity and diversity; freedom of religion and religious symbols in the public sphere; dual nationality; and dilemmas of removal or stripping of citizenship. We will place these developments in a broader theoretical, comparative, and international context. Throughout the course, we will consider the implications of these developments for the meaning of citizenship, the rights of migrants, and the future of borders.

Crimigration Clinic 

 Professor: Philip L. Torrey
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description In the Crimmigration Clinic students work on cutting-edge issues regarding the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. The content of the clinical projects will depend on the legal landscape and political climate at the time of clinical enrollment. In the past, students have worked on administrative and federal litigation in both federal appellate courts and district courts on behalf of clients concerning criminal bars to immigration relief, detention, and the crime-based grounds of removal. Students also work with community-based organizations and non-profits. Clinical students will also work with the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute and other criminal defense attorneys around the country to provide advice about the immigration consequences of criminal charges. The Crimmigration Clinic is offered for 3 clinical credits in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Students in the clinic (both Fall and Spring semesters) are required to enroll in the Fall clinical course component. Successful completion of appropriate written work in this offering satisfies the professional writing requirement for matriculants to the J.D. program from 2023 onward.

Crimmigration: The Intersection of Criminal Law and Immigration Law

 Professor: Philip L. Torrey 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description The intersection of criminal law and immigration law is a growing field of law that is at the forefront of today's immigration debate. As immigration laws have become more "criminalized" and criminal laws have become more "immigrationized" it is increasingly important to understand the intersection of criminal law and immigration law. The goal of this course is to give students the skills to recognize and examine immigration consequences of criminal convictions and to understand how those laws have developed in light of historical trends related to immigration detention, border security, race, poverty, national security, and Fifth Amendment Due Process jurisprudence. This course satisfies the clinical seminar requirement for the Crimmigration Clinic. To learn more about the Clinical Curriculum and Registration, please visit our Clinical Registration Center. You can also find more information on How to Register for Clinics and How Clinical Credits Work.

Detention, Deportation, and Due Process: A Look at the Inner Workings of the U.S. Immigration System 

 Professor: Sabrineh Ardalan & Cindy Zapata
School: Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences 
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description Note: (first-year seminar, only open to undergrads) The public discourse on immigration is widespread and divisive. If you ever wanted to know more about how our immigration system operates, its faults, and potential ways to fix it, then this seminar is for you. The goal of the seminar is to teach students in an interactive and welcoming environment the basic aspects of U.S. immigration policy, the role of lawyers in immigration advocacy spaces, and how to develop creative advocacy strategies to advance immigrants’ rights. The seminar will leverage the experience and expertise of faculty members with the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (“HIRCP”) to explore the multitude of ways immigration policies can be challenged and reshaped in Congress, the courts, and the public discourse. We will address major themes and controversies in immigration and refugee law and policy advocacy, including: the origins and evolution of U.S. immigration law; the basis for refugee protection in the United States; the role of Congress, courts and administrative agencies; cutting-edge issues in U.S. asylum law, including issues related to gender-based claims, credibility & corroboration, expanding bars to asylum; current challenges at the U.S-Mexico border; the criminalization of immigrants; and the U.S. detention regime.This seminar is designed to create a welcoming and dynamic environment in which we can collectively interrogate how different modes of advocacy—from litigation and community organizing to media advocacy and direct representation—can move immigration law forward. The class will include simulations and other interactive classroom modules and will feature guest lectures from community partners and advocates with whom HIRCP has worked on various advocacy projects. We welcome opposing viewpoints, respectful discourse, and aim to create a space where differing perspectives can be explored.

Foreign Bodies: On Health and Migration

 Professor: Eram Alam
Semester: Fall 2025
Description During the twentieth century, unprecedented human mobility has raised significant questions regarding migration and health. Whether coerced or voluntary, these migratory flows reverberate through individuals, communities, populations, environments, and the body politic in unexpected ways. This course will focus on the relationship between health and migration and ask the following questions: How are moving bodies named and managed? What are the political, economic, juridical, and medical implications of movement? How is risk defined and constructed in relation to migration? Readings will include case studies from around the world, supplemented with theoretical and literary texts.

Global Religious Change: Babies, Converts, Migrants

 Professor: Gina A. Zurlo 
School: Harvard Divinity School 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course uses social scientific perspectives to understand religious change in the 20th and 21st centuries by investigating six dynamics: births/deaths (fertility), converts in/converts out (switching), and emigration/immigration (migration). Students will be introduced to important debates in the sociology of religion such as theories of religious change and issues related to data availability, interpretation, and communication. Relevant questions include: What data sources exist to interpret religious/non-religious global trends? Is the world becoming more or less religious? Under what conditions does an individual or community switch religions? What causes declines in fertility rates, and how do rates differ by religion? Will Islam become the world’s largest religion and, if so, by when and how? How does migration effect religious belief and practice? By investigating the six dynamics of religious change in the past, we can make reasonable assumptions for the religious and non-religious future. Four case studies detailed in the course are Christianity’s demographic shift to the global South with a focus on Nigeria, the Jewish diaspora, demography of religion in India, and religious decline in the West. Students will have the opportunity to write a final research paper or produce a demographic report.

Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic 

 Professor: Sabrineh Ardalan
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description For thirty years, the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC), in partnership with Greater Boston Legal Services (GBLS), has focused on representation of individuals applying for asylum and related relief, as well as representation of individuals who have survived domestic violence and other crimes and/or who seek avoidance of forced removal in immigration proceedings (i.e., VAWA, U-visas, Cancellation of Removal, Temporary Protected Status, etc.). HIRC is also involved in district court and appellate litigation, as well as policy advocacy at the local, national, and international levels. HIRC students take the lead in representing clients from all over the world who are seeking protection from being returned to human rights abuses in their country of origin, protection from exile after years of living in the United States, or reunification with their families. About forty students are placed each year with HIRC, either at Harvard or at its partner clinic, Greater Boston Legal Services, Boston's oldest legal services organization (located in downtown Boston). Students are encouraged to sign up for either sixteen or twenty hours per week (4-5 clinical credits).

Immigrant Children & Youth

 Professor: Carola Suárez-Orozco 
School: Harvard Graduate School of Education 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description *Lottery-Based Enrollment* In this course, we will examine the immigrant origin child and youth experience through intersecting and interdisciplinary lenses. Over one quarter of students in the U.S. have immigrant parents. The goal of the course is to unpack what about the immigrant experience matters for child and youth development with a focus on the implications for their educational experiences and pathways. The course takes an ecological and risk and resilience framework. Topics to be covered will include: immigrant family dynamics; belonging and exclusion; acculturation and identity; undocumented and mixed-status implications for development, language development; assessment; among others. Throughout the course, we will consider practice, research, and policy implications.

Immigrant Justice Lab

 Professor: Jesse Hoffnug-Garskof 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description This course trains and supports teams of undergraduates to contribute research and writing for asylum applicants represented by attorneys at the Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice. The course operates on four parallel tracks. The first is basic training in asylum law. The second involves a mixture of collaborative planning, research writing and editing about the history of the societies from which our asylum seekers have fled. Students will be divided into teams and assigned case facts. They will generate research questions, build dossiers of research materials, and draft legal briefs relating their research findings to the pertinent questions in asylum law. The third involves reflection and on the ethical practice of legal advocacy, and responsible depictions of violence and injustice in foreign cultures. Fourth, students will participate actively in planning, building, and nurturing a partnership between an academic institution and a community-based organization.

Immigration and Refugee Advocacy

 Professor: Sabrineh Ardalan 
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description This seminar addresses U.S. immigration and asylum law, as well as advocacy skills relevant to students' work at the clinic. The skills component of the seminar addresses such areas as effective client interviewing, affidavit writing, trial preparation, policy advocacy, district court and appellate litigation, and amicus briefs. In order to cultivate best practices in student advocacy, this seminar draws heavily for instructional examples on students' clinical experiences. It also allows students to connect their understanding of immigration and refugee law and lawyering skills to actual casework through consideration of specific issues of doctrine and policy implicated by students' cases. Students will also have an opportunity to reflect critically on their experiences, models of advocacy, and social justice.

Immigration Initiative at Harvard Seminar 

 Professor: Carola Suárez-Orozco
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description The Immigration Initiative at Harvard (IIH) fosters a community of scholars engaged in the exchange of research, ideas, and practices related to serving immigrant origin children, adolescents, and young adults. In this advanced seminar, doctoral students and post-doctoral fellows from within HGSE, FAS, and across Harvard will present ongoing works-in-progress to receive mentoring and professional development support as they develop their ideas and scholarship. In addition, participants in this year-long seminar will hear from national and international guest speakers presenting their work around topics related to research, policy, and practice particularly focused on immigrant origin children and youth. This seminar will be held jointly between the IIH community and the Migration & Immigrant Incorporation Workshop in FAS. Members of the Harvard Migration and Immigrant Incorporation workshop share a common interest in international migration and the incorporation of immigrants into host societies including questions of race and the integration of the second generation (the children of immigrants). While the majority of participants focus on the United States, the workshop includes and is open to researchers studying other immigrant-receiving countries. The primary purpose of the workshop is to circulate works-in-progress to elicit feedback and suggestions for improving scholarly work such as dissertation chapters or proposals, journal article submissions, interview schedules, and conference papers. ***This is a Year Long course, students need to take part A and B in order to earn 2 credits, please note that part A carries 0 credits and part B carries 2 credits***

Immigration Law

 Professor: Gerald L. Neuman 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description After three major swings of the political pendulum, federal immigration law is deeply unsettled. This course examines current developments in the context of the statutory system that provides their basis, and the peculiar constitutional doctrines that persist in this field, with attention to the normative debates. Among other topics, we will consider the criteria for admission and residence in the United States, the grounds and process of deportation, an introduction to refugee law, and the endangered right to judicial review.

Immigration Law: A History of the Present

 Professor: Jesse Hoffnug-Garskof 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course assists students to develop an informed analysis of the current political debate through investigation of the legal history of immigration since founding of the republic. Students analyze the ways that histories of race, gender, sexuality, class and global politics have shaped and continue to shape the law and politics of immigration. Through structured in-class activities and challenges, students learn a range of legal history methods. They then have opportunities to use these methods to study competing claims about immigration in the current moment. Ideal for anyone considering a career in immigration law, policy, social activism or public service, but all are welcome.

International Law and Global Justice

 Professor: Kathryn Sikkink 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description Can international law be a tool for promoting global justice? Or is international law increasingly obsolete in the face of multiple challenges in today’s world? In this class, we will explore these issues looking at diverse and important areas of international law: 1) international human rights law and accountability for mass atrocity; 2) international environmental law and climate justice; 3) the laws of war, especially the decision to go to war and wars of aggression; 4) international trade law, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and tariffs; and 5) international investment law and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS); and 6) international refugee and migrant law. But if students wish to do a deep dive on any other international law issue, from cybersecurity to outer space law to law of the sea, you can select the topic of your choice for your two low-stakes assignments and your final paper topic. We will begin the course with an overview of international law, international treaties, and international courts such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We will use a global justice approach to ask and try to explore the goals and impact of international law. A global justice approach stresses fairness, political and economic equality of both opportunity and outcome, and accountability. The central goal of the course is to familiarize students with legal, analytical and policy tools to enable you to think and act critically when drafting, implementing, or responding to policies related to international law. The course uses cases, role-playing, and simulations to help students learn how to work with international law. We use taped short videos on key class concepts and issues or talks by guest speakers that you can watch before class, so we can “flip” the class and open more class time for discussion and group activities.

International Law and Global South Statecraft

 Professor: Naz Modirzadeh 
School: Harvard Law School 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This offering will explore the role of the state and sovereignty in contemporary multilateral affairs, with a focus on struggles concerning the purported breakdown of the "rules-based international order," efforts to challenge the dominant approach to the doctrine of sources, and resistance against foreign interference. We will read primary and secondary sources, think critically about legal and political claims, and explore potential futures for what a “pro-Global South approach” to international law and institutions of global governance might look like.

Junior Tutorial: Sociology of Immigration: Latinx

 Professor: Meylin Gonzales Huamán
School: Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This junior tutorial examines Latinx immigration from a sociological perspective that approaches migration as a lifelong process starting from the context of origin in Latin America and continuing in the context of reception in the US. To this end, we will explore issues of race and ethnicity in Latin America, the origins of the Hispanic/Latino category in the US, transnational immigrant civic and political engagement and their political incorporation in the US. Students will have the opportunity to develop an original research project on a topic relevant to this course. The methodological focus will be qualitative interviews from an inductive research approach. Accordingly, from the third week of the course, students will conduct exploratory interviews on a broad topic they are interested in, which will then inform the research question that will guide their research question and subsequent data collection.

Migration and Border Crossing in Film and Photography

 Professor: Raquel Vega-Duran 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course is conducted in Spanish. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this course explores the ways in which film and photography recount past and present human migrations, and how they contribute to and question the construction of the social imaginary of the migrant. Focusing on migrations particularly related to Spanish-speaking countries, we will examine themes such as "global” vs. “local”; conceptions of hybridity, otherness, belonging, border, assimilation, and neo-racism; the paradoxical nature of the “migrant”; the role of history, language, religion, and culture in the acceptance and rejection of foreigners; the relationship between border and identity; the feminization of migrations; the use of the term "illegal" in relation to migrations; and the emergence of “new" identities; among others. We will learn how to analyze the complexities of film and photography, considering movies, documentaries, photographs, and other visual materials which cover past and present migrations from Africa, America, Asia, and Europe. We will also study the history of migrations, and will examine the intricacies of the concept of migrant (as both emigrant and immigrant), paying particular attention to the different stages of migrants' journeys (the departure from the home country; the crossing of transit countries and borders; the arrival; and the settlement or forced deportation). No previous knowledge of film or photography required.

Migration and Immigrant Incorporation Workshop

 Professor: Mary Waters 
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description Bi-weekly colloquium for graduate students that examines international migration and the incorporation of migrants into host societies. Students participate in meetings and present original work in progress.

Migration and the Humanities

 Professor: Homi Bhabha
Semester: Spring 2026
Description By focusing on literary narratives, cultural representations, and critical theories, this course explores ways in which issues related to migration create rich and complex interdisciplinary conversations. How do humanistic disciplines address these issues—human rights, cultural translation, global justice, security, citizenship, social discrimination, biopolitics—and what contributions do they make to the “home” disciplines of migration studies such as law, political science, and sociology? How do migration narratives compel us to revise our concepts of culture, polity, neighborliness, and community? We will explore diverse aspects of migration from existential, ethical, and philosophical perspectives while engaging with specific regional and political histories.

Migration as Adaptation: Planning for Real Receiving Communities

 Professor: Hannah Teicher 
School: Harvard Graduate School of Design 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description In an era of accelerating climate disruption, people are increasingly on the move. This is largely due to forced displacement after extreme events but can also be a result of proactive migration in search of relief from chronic environmental stressors. Cities have become the receiving places for most of this relocation. Some have received rapid influxes of newcomers after nearby disasters, while others have seized an opportunity for economic development, branding themselves climate refuges and trying to attract people and businesses on that basis.As cities grapple with the fallout of climate mobility and try to leverage opportunities where they arise, policymakers and academics have been debating the potential of this migration to serve as adaptation. Migration may be adaptive when people are at least as well off after relocation as they were before. A stronger case can be made when receiving communities not only integrate newcomers but also build climate resilience into infrastructures and services. However, there is always a risk that touting migration as adaptation covers for the failure to adapt in places that are typically marginalized and disinvested.This seminar will engage with the full landscape of receiving communities for climate migrants while attending to major theoretical debates on the topic. Even with this focus, we will proceed on the basis that migration has complex drivers. Economic, political, and climate conditions are intertwined, and climate may not be the most salient factor to migrants themselves or the communities and cities that receive them. However, climate migration presents unique challenges given the pervasiveness of environmental disruption, meaning that no place is safe from climate change. Climate mobility and receiving communities are real and growing, and they require attention in practice.Students will grapple with this through two complementary parts of the seminar: 1. A foundation in the field through readings and discussion of major topics and 2. Case studies of receiving communities to be provided as a deliverable to a real-world client. The course will delve into major topics including migration as adaptation, equity and justice in relocation, limits to adaptation and maladaptation, debates over livability and immobility, voluntary and involuntary migration, and immigration and refugee law and policy for climate mobility. Students will put these concepts into practice, conducting case studies of domestic and international receiving communities for the Climigration Network to support their work with community partners seeking to understand enablers of relocation. Through the two complementary parts of the course, students will have an opportunity to be at the cutting-edge of practice while engaging thoughtfully with the full complexity of underlying climate migration challenges.

Migration, Refugees, and Human Rights 

 Professor: Jacqueline Bhabha
Semester: Fall 2025
Description Migration is a central political and moral issue of our time and its impacts will continue to alter our world throughout this century. Indeed large scale, irregular human migration should be considered “the new normal†, not an unexpected or one-off “crisis†. It affects the lives of millions, unsettles established governments, creates sharply polarizing policy dilemmas and generates far-reaching administrative, economic and political challenges. This course will focus on distress migration, including refugee flight and other forms of forced displacement, evaluated through the lens of human rights. It will address the multifaceted drivers of the phenomenon, including the enduring legacies of colonization, armed conflict, environmental stress and climate change, global inequality, demographic pressures and increasing globalization. The course will also consider the impact of government responses to the COVID 19 pandemic on forced migrants. Migration actors from UN agencies, NGOs and other civil society organizations, and research experts working in a range of field sites will contribute to the class. The course will address the legal frameworks governing migration, and the ethical and pragmatic considerations that influence policies. It will explore the viability of a range of solutions to current migration challenges, including unequal access to protection, the failure of equitable resettlement and the erosion of host empathy/solidarity. The extent to which pandemic related measures conform to or violate legal and ethical obligations will also be considered. A key goal is to enable students to analyze current migration situations with clarity and rigor concerning the obligations of states and the rights of migrants. Using examples of large-scale contemporary population movements – the Ukrainian war and its human impact, the ongoing Tigrayan emergency, the Rohingya exodus, the Venezuelan context, the Mediterranean migration situation, extensive intra-regional mobility within the African continent, US/Mexico/Central American movements, unaccompanied child migration in many regions – the course will examine migration drivers, policy responses and rights challenges such as exclusion and denial of protection, persistent racism in border control, detention, prolonged confinement within refugee camps and forced repatriation. It will also engage with the multiple risks, including statelessness, trafficking, drowning, sexual violence, that migrants face before, during and after their journeys. The course will cover key current policy developments, at the municipal, national, regional and international level, including the impact of Global Compacts on Refugees and on Migration. The course will discuss seasonal migration, child migration, undocumented and irregular status, gender factors in migration and the role of xenophobia in driving policy. Students will be required to make in class presentations, to prepare questions for guest lecturers, and encouraged to participate in class discussion, including by to considering a range of strategies for increasing access to safe mobility as a key redistributive global good.

Public International Law 

 Professor: Naz Modirzadeh
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description This is an introductory course to public international law. The first part of the course provides a classical foundation to the sources and subjects, as well as key tenets and core concepts, of international law. We will also discuss the role of public international organizations such as the United Nations in developing, interpreting, and shaping the international legal system. The second part of the course will focus on selected topics, including the use of force, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and international refugee and migration law. These topics may change based on contemporary events and debates. We will also explore critical perspectives from within the field, as well as external challenges to the legitimacy of public international law.

Refugees in Global Perspective

 Professor: Danilo Mandic 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description What does it mean to lose your home? Who are refugees? Why are there so many of them? How are they displaced? Where do they go, and why? This course inquires into the nature, causes, and consequences of contemporary forced migration in our globalized world. Students survey regional dynamics in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. We examine the particularities of refugees compared to other migrants, and the changing nature of forced migration since the World Wars. Students explore historical precedents to contemporary forced migration, learn about different host society approaches to asylum, compare government and criminal mechanisms of forced migration, and examine why refugees are objects of suspicion and hostility around the world. Particular attention is paid to the connection between forced confinement and forced migration, the role of refugee camps and urban integration, and alternative strategies for global asylum management by bridge and destination countries.

Refugees in the Rust Belt

 Professor: Daniel D’Oca 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description More than 114 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced—the highest number ever recorded. Among them, millions of Muslim refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Myanmar have resettled in the United States, where cities—not camps—become their new homes. This project-based studio explores how design, planning, and policy can help Muslim refugee communities build thriving lives across Upstate New York’s Erie Canal corridor, linking Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.Once the industrial heartland of the state, these cities now face population decline, aging infrastructure, and thousands of vacant lots. Yet they have also become some of the most welcoming places in the country. Refugee families are revitalizing neighborhoods, opening businesses, and establishing mosques, halal markets, and community spaces, while still confronting challenges of housing quality, mobility, employment, and access to culturally appropriate services.The class unfolds in four phases: Phase 1 (Introduction) introduces the refugee resettlement process in the U.S., exploring best practices for integration and principles for ethical engagement with Muslim communities. Phase 2 (Cultural and Spatial Research) investigates cultural and spatial traditions from refugees’ countries of origin (including housing typologies, public gathering spaces, and faith-based institutions) to identify design principles that can inform resettlement strategies in host communities.Phase 3 (Spatial Atlas) maps settlement patterns and everyday geographies (i.e. where Muslim refugees live, work, shop, and worship). Students will assess the supply and condition of affordable homes and explore design approaches that reflect multi-generational living, privacy needs, and family-centered space.Phase 4 (Proposals) develops multi-scalar interventions that integrate cultural infrastructure and foster belonging, from housing prototypes and adaptive reuse strategies to corridor frameworks and policy recommendations. A special emphasis will be placed on housing as both a foundation for stability and a catalyst for community life.A regional field trip through the corridor cities will connect students with resettlement agencies, Muslim community leaders, land banks, and municipal partners, revealing how design can advance inclusive, culturally grounded arrival cities that uphold the dignity and aspirations of Muslim refugees and the communities that welcome them.

Sociology of Immigration

 Professor: Mary Waters 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This course examines theories and empirical research on international migration. We concentrate on recent research in sociology, but we also include readings from across the social sciences. We examine immigration policy, and the integration of immigrants and later generations, paying particular attention to legal status and race and ethnicity. Limited to graduate students in sociology and related social sciences.

Spatial Design Strategies for Climate- and Conflict-Induced Migration

 Professor: Malkit Shoshan 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description Climate change presents an urgent global challenge with far-reaching implications for human societies and all other species inhabiting the planet. Over the next few decades, extreme climate zones and uninhabitable areas are projected to expand, driven by factors such as water stress, food insecurity, extreme heat, sea level rise, and weather-related disasters such as storms and wildfires. These challenges are already driving instability and increasing displacement, forcing individuals and communities to leave behind the spaces and cultures they have inhabited for generations. In the seminar, the class will engage with diverse stakeholders and viewpoints from theory and practice. We will have conversations with representatives of United Nations agencies, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which possess real-time data and field experience. Drawing on their data sets and engaging in dialogue with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community representatives, we will develop a case study focused on climate migration in the Sahel, with particular attention to the situation in Mauritania, where local and international organizations are working together to support the country’s open-door policy and its efforts to host refugees from the region (and keep them from reaching Europe).Sessions will include meetings with diverse stakeholders, interaction with UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and representative of local communities, and in-class workshops for project development that include spatial analyses of migration trends and scenario exercises. To attend the class, students are required to have knowledge of spatial design (architecture, urban and landscape architecture) along with basic mapping skills.

Strategic Litigation and Immigration Advocacy

 Professor: Sabrineh Ardalan & Philip Torrey
Semester: Spring 2026
Description There is perhaps no other area of law that has been more profoundly altered in the last few years than immigration. The field has seen dramatic shifts in enforcement priorities, executive action, state and local responses, and courts' willingness to weigh-in on issues that they had previously refused to opine on. The goal of this course is to teach students how to develop and reflect on creative litigation and policy advocacy strategies in a range of different contexts. The course will leverage the experience and expertise of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program (“HIRCP”) attorneys along with their community partners to explore the multitude of ways immigration policies can be challenged and reshaped. Case studies will include new rules restricting asylum protection, state and local “sanctuary” policies, detention and the criminalization of immigrants, community organizing and empowerment, and media as an advocacy tool. The course will explore challenges to precedent through appellate litigation, strategic litigation in district court and administrative tribunals, policy-making at the state and local levels, and different approaches to influencing policy makers and the public. Many of these strategies build upon HIRCP’s long-standing commitment to changing the law from the bottom up. In addition to class discussion, simulations, and other interactive classroom modules, the course will feature guest lectures from community partners and advocates with whom HIRCP has worked on various litigation and policy advocacy projects.

Terrorism and International Law

 Professor: Naz Modirzadeh
Semester: Spring 2026
Description How does international law define terrorism? In what ways is terrorism framed as an international problem requiring international solutions? Are contemporary counterterrorism approaches in tension with the rules of international law? This course will introduce students to the rules, policies, and institutions of international efforts to combat terrorism. We will explore how these efforts operate within the system of public international law and how they interact with legal regimes within that system, including the law of war and international human rights law. We will examine how, particularly after September 11, 2001, global approaches to countering terrorism may weaken or strengthen existing international legal frameworks and multilateral institutions. Readings will draw from a variety of primary sources (including terrorism-suppression treaties, United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, and select municipal legislative and enforcement frameworks) as well as academic and policy literature related to terrorism and counterterrorism. The course will focus on real-world interpretive dilemmas, legal challenges to counterterrorism approaches, and related complex decision-making.

Topics in Latinx Studies: Latinx Literature and Visual Culture

 Professor: Aitor Bouson Gavín
School: Ethnic studies
Semester: Fall 2025
Description This is a broad-based course that utilizes art and literature as political and historical tools of analysis. Students will be introduced to a variety of issues, debates, and methodologies which are central to Latinx studies. While engaging in a hands-on practice of self-inquiry and social critique, we will learn to model a comparative, intersectional, and transnational approach to study the work of influential Latinx writers, artists, and scholars. The class will facilitate contemporary discussions of cultural and political articulations of Latinidad. We will focus on key historical national and transhemispheric movements and events that have shaped the history of Latinx communities in the US such as ‘El Movimiento’ [Chicano Movement], the influx of Central American migration after prolonged civil wars and military interventions on the region, or the impact of NAFTA on the border. Given that Latinx creators often blur the boundaries of traditional literary, artistic, and scholarly genres, students will be working with works by diverse foundational figures which includes Afro-Nuyorican author Piri Thomas, queer Chicana multidisciplinary writer Gloria Anzaldúa and contemporary visual artists such as Firelei Báez and Guadalupe Maravilla. Topics addressed in the course will include: the history of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, transnational migration and the U.S.-Mexico border, the colonial legacies of anti-blackness, Latina feminism(s), or critical Latinx Indigeneities. The class is open and accessible to all students.

What is International History?

 Professor: Erez Manela 
Semester: Spring 2026
Description How states interact has always been a defining question of politics. How do they keep peace and why do they go to war? How do they determine their territorial, legal, and economic borders? And can they agree to common rules – about trade, the environment, immigration, or human rights? This course will explore major themes, events, and questions of international history to understand the emergence of some of the most complex problems of modern international politics.

Who Governs? Power in America

 Professor: Thomas Patterson
School: Harvard Kennedy School 
Semester: Fall 2025
Class Number: DPI 127
Description Through case studies, this course will explore the distribution of power in America. Among other issues, the course will examine immigration, climate change, war powers, race, healthcare, monetary policy, trade, tax policy, voter suppression, and campaign spending. Except for a few historical cases, the cases will be current or recent. The cases will be designed to help students understand the power dynamics of American politics and to strengthen their analysis and communication skills. Assignments will consist of practical exercises in the context of policy and political issues.

Who Governs? Power in America

 Professor: Thomas Patterson 
School: Harvard Kennedy School 
Semester: Fall 2025
Description Through case studies, this course will explore the distribution of power in America. Among other issues, the course will examine immigration, climate change, war powers, race, healthcare, monetary policy, trade, tax policy, voter suppression, and campaign spending. Except for a few historical cases, the cases will be current or recent. The cases will be designed to help students understand the power dynamics of American politics and to strengthen their analysis and communication skills. Assignments will consist of practical exercises in the context of policy and political issues.

Writing Group: Immigration

 Professor: TBD
Semester: Fall 2025 & Spring 2026
Description Analytical Paper Required:Per the specification of the writing group, all enrolled students complete a research paper of one credit (at least 20-25 pages) or two credits (50 or more pages), with faculty and peer review of a substantially complete draft. This paper can be used to satisfy the analytical paper requirement for J.D. students. Students enrolling in a writing group are required to submit a signed Writing Group Registration Form to the Registrar's Office.
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