Tamar Jacoby
Encyclopedia
Tamar Jacoby is known primarily for her writing on immigration-related issues. She is also president and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA, an organization self-described as "a national federation of small business owners working to advance better immigration law." Jacoby was named a 2012 Bernard L. Schwartz
fellow at the New America Foundation
as of Sept. 1, 2011.
A native of New York City
, Ms. Jacoby graduated from Yale University
in 1976, after which she became a staffer on the New York Review of Books. From 1981 to 1987 she served as a deputy editor of the op-ed
page of The New York Times, and from 1987 to 1989 as a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek
. She has also been assistant to the editor at the New York Review of Books.
Her writing with regard to race relations and immigration has been published in numerous publications, including Commentary
, Dissent
, The Nation
, The New Republic
, The Washington Post
, the Los Angeles Times
, and the New York Times Book Review, among other journals of political thought and newspapers of national or regional scope.
Her 1998 book, Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration (Basic Books
), tells the story of race relations in three American cities—New York, Detroit and Atlanta.
More recently, Jacoby's career has been marked by an outspoken advocacy for policies that would liberalize America's immigration laws-which she believes is an essential policy shift in order to maintain the economic growth of the United States while preventing a brain drain
to other nations-specifically, the passage of a broad guest-worker program, which some critics have described as an amnesty
proposal.
To this end, she has repeatedly praised President Bush
's guest-worker legalization plan and engaged in numerous debates with critics of legalization such as Mark Krikorian
and John O' Sullivan.
In 2004, Basic Books published an anthology edited by Jacoby, Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American, which expands upon these views, and gathers a diverse array of writers who advocate some form of absorption and assimilation of recent immigrants. The same year, she was confirmed by the United States Senate
to a seat on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board to the National Endowment for the Humanities
.
In addition to her written work and studies, Jacoby has also taught at various educational institutions, including Cooper Union
, The New School
For Social Research, New York University and Yale University.
Jacoby is a recipient of the 2010/2011 Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin
. Jacoby also won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship
in 1974 to research and write about "What happened to racial integration in the United States."
In May, 2011, Jacoby and Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio debated, as the "against" team, the motion "Don't give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," with former Colorado Republican Congressman and Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo
and Kansas Secretary of State and primary author of the Arizona immigration law (2010) Kris Kobach
as the "for" team. The debate was broadcast by NPR
and hosted by Intelligence Squared US with John Donvan
as moderator. Tancredo and Kobach were declared the victors in the debate based on before and after polling of the live in-attendance audience, mostly because most of the self-identified undecided audience members decided in favor of the motion at the end. A slight majority of the audience opposed the motion, 54% before and 52% after. The debate motion was a play on the most famous lines (without the "don't" and with "me," not "us") of Emma Lazarus
' poem "The New Colossus
" which is on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty
.
At New America Foundation in 2011-12, Jacoby "will focus on issues of immigration and social cohesion" while retaining her positions at ImmigrationWorks.
Bernard L. Schwartz
Bernard Leon Schwartz was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Loral Space & Communications, Chairman and CEO of K&F Industries, Inc., Chairman and CEO of Loral Corp., and president and CEO of Globalstar. He retired from Loral and his positions at its various subsidiaries and affiliates as of...
fellow at the New America Foundation
New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a non-profit public policy institute and think tank with offices in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, CA. It was founded in 1999 by Ted Halstead, Sherle Schwenninger, Michael Lind and Walter Russell Mead....
as of Sept. 1, 2011.
A native of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Ms. Jacoby graduated from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1976, after which she became a staffer on the New York Review of Books. From 1981 to 1987 she served as a deputy editor of the op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
page of The New York Times, and from 1987 to 1989 as a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
. She has also been assistant to the editor at the New York Review of Books.
Her writing with regard to race relations and immigration has been published in numerous publications, including Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
, Dissent
Dissent (magazine)
Dissent is a quarterly magazine focusing on politics and culture edited by Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin. The magazine is published for the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc by the University of Pennsylvania Press....
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, and the New York Times Book Review, among other journals of political thought and newspapers of national or regional scope.
Her 1998 book, Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration (Basic Books
Basic Books
Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1952 and located in New York. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history.-History:...
), tells the story of race relations in three American cities—New York, Detroit and Atlanta.
More recently, Jacoby's career has been marked by an outspoken advocacy for policies that would liberalize America's immigration laws-which she believes is an essential policy shift in order to maintain the economic growth of the United States while preventing a brain drain
Brain drain
Human capital flight, more commonly referred to as "brain drain", is the large-scale emigration of a large group of individuals with technical skills or knowledge. The reasons usually include two aspects which respectively come from countries and individuals...
to other nations-specifically, the passage of a broad guest-worker program, which some critics have described as an amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
proposal.
To this end, she has repeatedly praised President Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
's guest-worker legalization plan and engaged in numerous debates with critics of legalization such as Mark Krikorian
Mark Krikorian
Mark Krikorian is an Armenian-American anti-immigration activist. He is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. that promotes stricter immigration control and enforcement...
and John O' Sullivan.
In 2004, Basic Books published an anthology edited by Jacoby, Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American, which expands upon these views, and gathers a diverse array of writers who advocate some form of absorption and assimilation of recent immigrants. The same year, she was confirmed by the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
to a seat on the National Council on the Humanities, the advisory board to the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
.
In addition to her written work and studies, Jacoby has also taught at various educational institutions, including Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
, The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
For Social Research, New York University and Yale University.
Jacoby is a recipient of the 2010/2011 Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin
American Academy in Berlin
The American Academy in Berlin is a research and cultural institution in Berlin whose stated mission is to foster a greater understanding and dialogue between the people of the United States and the people of Germany.The American Academy was founded in September 1994 by a group of prominent...
. Jacoby also won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship
Alicia Patterson Foundation
The Alicia Patterson Foundation Program was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson, who was editor and publisher of Newsday for nearly 23 years before her death in 1963.-AFP Fellowship:...
in 1974 to research and write about "What happened to racial integration in the United States."
In May, 2011, Jacoby and Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio debated, as the "against" team, the motion "Don't give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," with former Colorado Republican Congressman and Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo
Tom Tancredo
Thomas Gerard "Tom" Tancredo is an American politician from Colorado, who represented the state's sixth congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009, as a Republican...
and Kansas Secretary of State and primary author of the Arizona immigration law (2010) Kris Kobach
Kris Kobach
Kris W. Kobach is the Secretary of State of Kansas. He is also currently of counsel with the Immigration Law Reform Institute in Washington, D.C....
as the "for" team. The debate was broadcast by NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
and hosted by Intelligence Squared US with John Donvan
John Donvan
John Donvan is a correspondent for ABC News. A list of his career postings includes: Chief White House Correspondent, Chief Moscow Correspondent, Amman Bureau Chief, Jerusalem Correspondent, London Correspondent, Eastern Europe Correspondent, and, most recently, a regular correspondent for...
as moderator. Tancredo and Kobach were declared the victors in the debate based on before and after polling of the live in-attendance audience, mostly because most of the self-identified undecided audience members decided in favor of the motion at the end. A slight majority of the audience opposed the motion, 54% before and 52% after. The debate motion was a play on the most famous lines (without the "don't" and with "me," not "us") of Emma Lazarus
Emma Lazarus
Lazarus began to be more interested in her Jewish ancestry after reading the George Eliot novel, Daniel Deronda, and as she heard of the Russian pogroms in the early 1880s. This led Lazarus to write articles on the subject. She also began translating the works of Jewish poets into English...
' poem "The New Colossus
The New Colossus
"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by Emma Lazarus , written in 1883 and, in 1903, engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the Statue of Liberty.- History of the poem :...
" which is on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
.
At New America Foundation in 2011-12, Jacoby "will focus on issues of immigration and social cohesion" while retaining her positions at ImmigrationWorks.
External links
- Linked articles and publications
- NYU Panelist Bios: Tamar Jacoby
- 'Guest Workers' Won't Work
- Fixing Immigration, Part One of Two Discussion between Ben Wattenberg and Jacoby.
- America as a Beacon
- Immigration and American Identity: An Open Letter to Tamar Jacoby, from John Fonte, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Hudson InstituteHudson InstituteThe Hudson Institute is an American think tank founded in 1961, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation...
, March 6, 2007.