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Jacqueline Stevens

Professor; Founding Faculty Director, Deportation Research Clinic, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs; Institute for Policy Research, Faculty Associate; Political Theory Field Coordinator

A.B.: Smith College, 1984; Ph.D.: University of California, Berkeley, 1993

Interests

Research Interest(s): Political theories of membership; deconstruction; citizenship; deportation; rule of law; queer theory; forensic intelligence

Program Area(s): Political Theory; Law and Politics

Regional Specialization(s): United States; Middle East

Subfield Specialties: Critical Theory

Joint Appointment

Legal Studies

Additional

Deportation Research Clinic, Buffett Institute for Global Studies

States Without Nations

Publications

Biography

Professor Stevens conducts research on political theories and practices of membership since antiquity.  Her current studies of deportation law enforcement engage European fantasies of conquest in the 12th to 17th centuries as well as the quotidian of government documents revealing contemporary illegalities, including practices resulting in the unlawful deportation of United States citizens from the United States.  Her research on deportations has been the basis of successful lawsuits challenging government misconduct.

Professor Stevens' work has appeared in Political Theory, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Social Text, Third World Quarterly, and many other scholarly venues, as well as in The Nation magazine and the New York Times.  Reports on her work on ICE and private prison misconduct have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and numerous other venues.

She received her PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors from Smith College.

In 2012 Stevens established the country's first "research clinic." The Deportation Research Clinic supervises undergraduate and graduate students interested in scholarship that advances forensic intelligence, that is, knowledge distributed in public forums to dialectically advance law and thwarts injustice. The Clinic has filed hundreds of requests under the Freedom of Information Act and successfully litigated over 30 requests in federal court. Stevens received her PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1993 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors from Smith College.

Guggenheim Fellow, 2013-2014

Founding Director of the Deportation Research Clinic, Buffett Institute for Global Studies

Publications

Books  

  • Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness, co-editor (Duke University Press, 2017), full open access through Knowledge Unlatched.
  • States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals (Columbia University Press, 2009).
  • International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice, co-editor (Routledge, 2008).
  • Reproducing the State (Princeton University Press, 1999).

Awards & Honors

  • Guggenheim Fellow, 2013-14
  • Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Scholar, 1997-1999
  • Congressional Women's Caucus Fellow, House Judiciary on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 1986-87