The United States was founded in response to discontent with social, political, cultural, and economic systems. As a result, social discontents themselves became legitimated through the making of the Constitution. This year’s Constitution Day panel considers “discontents” as they are shaped by the American constitutional framework. We will discuss how broad understandings of “liberties” and specific understandings of “rights” contribute to today’s discontents. Panelists will explore how citizens’ discontents are codified in laws, cultures, and practices, and how we might re-think the constitution according to how American discontents are framed and enacted.

Rich Benjamin’s analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, The Guardian, NPR, PBS, MSNBC, and CNN. He is the author of Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America, selected as an Editor’s Choice by Booklist and the American Library Association (2009).

Rosina Lozano’s first book, An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (University of California Press, 2018), is a political history of the Spanish language in the United States from the incorporation of the Mexican cession in 1848 through present-day debates related to immigration and Americanization. It received the PROSE award in Language and Linguistics (2019) and the First Book Prize from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ areas of research include labor, gender, international migration and human trafficking, the family and economic sociology. She has co-edited three anthologies and written five monographs and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Her last two projects have sought to document and examine the experiences of migrant workers identified by the U.S. Department of State as victims of human trafficking.

Patricia Fernández-Kelly has written extensively on migration, economic restructuring, women in the labor force, and race and ethnicity. She co-produced the Emmy-award winning documentary “The Global Assembly Line.” She is director of the Center for Migration and Development and a research associate in the Office of Population Research, and associate director of the Effron Center for the Study of America.

This is an in-person event, free and open to the public. Register through Princeton University Ticketing. Current guidance for visitors regarding Covid-19 may be found on the EHS Visitor Policy page, section IV.b.