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Saint Helena Virtual Forum

America’s Immigration Divide 

​How our country’s current polarization is based upon historic regional lines

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Historian  Colin Woodard in conversation with Journalist David Freed

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Available for Viewing Beginning April 9, 2025

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Colin Woodard is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist,  known for his books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the New York Times bestseller  The Republic of Pirates, for Lobster Coast, a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine, as well as three others. Woodard is Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University, a project focused on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the U.S. federation’s stability. 

Using the American Nations model Woodard demonstrates how unevenly foreign immigration has been spread and how it’s changed over the course of the past 125 years.

The outgrowths of those divergent historical experiences and resulting cultural legacies help explain the current regional attitudes and divides over immigration policy. He shows how Americans, by and large, continue to see the country as a nation of immigrants and reject radical anti-immigrant policies, just as they oppose total abortion bans and support tightening gun regulations. But as with these other issues, in our federated and triple-branched system, public support alone is no guarantee of the political outcome.

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David Freed is a former adjunct professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Communications at Colorado State University,  He holds a master's degree in extension studies from Harvard University and also teaches creative writing as an instructor at Harvard Extension School.

Beginning in 1990, while writing for the Los Angeles Times, David wrote a series of articles  that highlighted flaws in Los Angeles County's criminal justice system, including overcrowded county jails and poor enforcement of lesser crimes.This series made Freed a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Freed also shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting with fellow staff writers at the newspaper for reportage on the Rodney King riots in 1992.

Freed has also written mystery-thriller novels centered on a protagonist named Cordell Logan, as well a several screenplays for Hollywood. David has done a number of interviews for the Forum and he is also a licensed and avid pilot.

This webcast can be viewed along with dozens of past forum interviews at the View Past Forum heading above or at this link:

Saint Helena Forum YouTube Channel

THE SAINT HELENA FORUM FOR INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY, a 501(c)3 educational non-profit, is produced entirely by volunteers drawn from a cross section of Napa Valley residents.

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