For years, the mantra on the left was “reimagining” everything from policing to free speech to defense. Reimagining often was a synonym for defunding or limiting the subject matter. Now, Georgetown Law Professor Sherally Munshi and others are attacking border enforcement as “ethically indefensible.” Munshi calls it “defamiliarizing” the whole concept of borders, which she and others in higher education now find morally reprehensible.
Munshi’s talk, “Unsettling the Border,” is an example of how radical many law faculties have become. She is by no means a standout in such theories. While schools have purged their ranks of conservative, libertarian, and dissenting faculty, there is no limit to faculty writing on the far left.
Munshi insists that “there is nothing natural or inevitable about the United States’ contemporary borders.” She mocked the whole notion of “the so-called border crisis.” Millions of unvetted people just walking over the border is not a crisis… at least not for the country. It is failure in ourselves; “a crisis of imagination.” Accordingly, she is calling for reimagining or defamiliarizing borders:
“Our task, as I put it, is to unsettle the border, to defamiliarize, disenchant, and recontextualize it by critically evaluating the historical processes, the legal developments, the discursive formations that naturalize and legitimate the border.”
It is, of course, racist to want to have secure borders:
“Rather than redress the fact that the international border regime is practically unsustainable [and] ethically indefensible, majorities in the whitest and wealthiest nations are embracing an increasingly authoritarian form of nationalism and exclusion.”
Borders, according to Professor Munshi, are just a construct “within the American imaginary, the southern border divides white from indigenous, purity from heterogeneity, civilization from savagery, settler from Indian.”
Of course, this reimagining of borders will have to extend back a tad further than the American founders. The concept of the nation-state with sovereign borders was recognized in documents like the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. It was credited with maintaining a Westphalian peace with nations able to maintain their own territory and governing systems. That, in turn, allowed nation-states to form international bodies and further stabilize global relations.
I have heard other faculty present papers along these same lines, dismissing the very concept of border enforcement as racist, privileged, or archaic. It is far more rare to hear conservatives on campuses arguing for border enforcement and deportations. It is even less common to find such advocates on both faculties.
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculties replicate their own views and values.
The problem is not that there are radicals teaching at law schools, but that most faculties seem to run only from the left to the far left.
Perhaps it is time to . . . wait for it . . . reimagine or defamiliarize law school faculty appointments.
The DNC should consider incorporating Munshi’s theory into its platform.
I find it interesting that prof. Munshi essentially proposes a very anarcho-libertarian idea: no borders. Surely, she would not identify as libertarian. She is correct that the concept of the nation state is not absolute and that other forms of organization are imaginable. In the past, for instance, we had the Hanze League of cities. However, the nation state turns out to be the Darwinistic winner in the end. What Munshi does not mention or hasn’t thought through is that in the absence of a welfare state or any state at all, immigrants can, indeed, freely move across borders (as they no longer exist) but there is nobody providing support. No money: your problem. No free housing, no free health care, no free education, free clothing, or free food. That is not what she is envisioning. She wants to get rid of the borders but keep the welfare state. But that does not work conceptually. It is either a welfare state with border, or no state (and thus no welfare) at all.
When early immigrants arrived in the US up to 10 years or so after WWII, no help was given. You arrived and were let in, then find a job to take care of your family. It was make it, or break it. Many, not making it, returned home. Immigrants were (and are in principle) subject to a background and health check. That is still the case for legal immigrants. If you have a criminal record in your home country or be carrier of a contagious disease, you are not allowed in. I came to the US in 1994 on a so-called Green Card. The condition was that if I committed a crime or became a burden to the state within 10 years, I would be deported. Currently, illegal immigrants receive much better treatment than legal immigrants through welfare payments not available (for good reasons – I think the conditions for my green card were fair) to legal immigrants.
Water flows to the lowest point. Similarly, immigration moves (generally) from poor countries to rich countries. However, rich countries will most certainly lose their wealth if they let millions in on a free ride. It is simply unaffordable. Munshi is herewith invited to explain why it is morally justified for someone from a third world country to move into mine and demanding of me and my neighbors to pay for their sustenance. It is one thing to ask for admittance, but quite another to ask for welfare from a system you did not pay-in to.
Of course, we have every right, I would say duty, to ensure that would-be immigrants are not a danger (as criminals or carriers of dangerous diseases) to those already here. If they are, we have the duty to turn them away. We also have no moral duty to provide welfare to immigrants. That right needs to be earned through labor and paying taxes for a good many years. Without the welfare, how many immigrants would still seek to come here.
Prof. Somin, a libertarian, is a supporter of immigration and he points out in his writings that immigrants contribute so much to society and have a lower crime rate than te average American. I agree with him in re of legal immigrants; many are educated, do not come here to receive support but to have an opportunity, are productive, or the financial means to invest and start a business. However, that is not, generally, true for illegal immigrants. Most do not speak English, have little in education, no money to invest, and little skills to offer. They constitute a net cost for at least a full generation, while legal immigrants contribute to society from day one.
Borders are not racist. Prof. Munshi is not thinking straight. Her thesis is that majorities in the whitest and wealthiest nation try to keep people out. This is not a ‘white’ thing. For instance, Japan, China, and Singapore have strict immigration rules; and the people there are not white. This white-bashing is ridiculous and inaccurate, and every so-called academic proclaiming this nonsense should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Correct is that immigration moves to the wealthiest countries and, thus, the wealthiest countries must shield themselves against uncontrolled immigration. Vice versa does not happen. Few, if any, want to permanently emigrate to a third world country without proper sanitary facilities, sewer systems, decent healthcare, and an acceptable degree of freedom. So, indeed, it are the wealthiest nations shielding their wealth from plunder. But then, it is their wealth; immigrants have no moral rights to share in the wealth accumulated by others, based on their illegal entry into someone else’s country. It is really that simple.
DoubleDutch,
Great comment.
DD. Very solid observations from beginning to end. Hats off! That said, we need to remember that Professor Munshi is a representative of her profession–today’s college faculty–where one always begins with a rigid ideological template through which all aspects of reality must pass. That template allows her to arrive at her preferred conclusions–she actually starts with her conclusions–without having to think very critically. Which is another way of saying she’s not really an intellectual. It also must be terribly hard for her when she travels abroad, assuming she does. International airports will not allow you to depart absent a valid passport, which is checked at various points before you can board the plane. And then, to add colonialist insult to imperialist injury, one must show that same passport in order to enter the country where the plane has landed. How do our faculty even begin to manage such outrages?
“What Munshi does not mention or hasn’t thought through … She wants to get rid of the borders but keep the welfare state”
If you take away the Boarders ‘State(s) Boundaries’ then there are no more ‘Immigrants’, The People are no longer “immigrating” to-or-from Anywhere.
They are in a ‘Global Free-Market Statehood’, Hence were are back to Square-One. People will setup Fences, they will form Groups, they will define their Territory, they will defend ‘What it is as Theirs’ (Mentally and Physically). To ‘define’ a State … Their State.
An Endless Cycle … Ending in Endless War …. …. ….
DoubleDutch-well said. The crime does go up as we see in the cities bursting with illegal aliens. All along the border, those closest counties also suffer increased crime and skyrocketing costs from students that bring in no taxes (because there parents have no jobs) and the hospitals are often to close to failure because of uncompensated care of illegals. Biden and Harris should be sent to Gitmo along with the other deportees.
DoubleDutch; those detailed factual observations and analysis of legal immigration versus Illegal Aliens criminally entering and then living in our country have ten times the value of Professor Turley’s column that served as his click-bait to bring us here.
If there is such a thing as the Democrat lie that our immigration system is broken (a lie increasingly parroted by Republicans), the real immigration reform we need is to remove the casual waste of legitimate immigration applicants’ (and our country’s) time as the idle State Department staff processing immigration applications indulge themselves in. After an applicant provides all of their biometric identification, all identification data for all their immediate relatives, all their home addresses and work history for the last 20 years, there is no excuse for State Department bureaucrats to take 5 – 8 years to provide a decision on whether the visa application met our immigration law requirements.
In short, the immigration reform we need is reforming the federal bureaucracy. Starting first with the obscene delays, and then the refusal of that same bureaucracy to disqualify and immediately remove all holders if ANY kind of US visa when they violate or cease meeting the conditions of the visa they entered the USA under. Whether H1-B work visas, the NAFTA professional visas, or a family member visa.
Doing that will do much to deal with the state of the bureaucracy screwing up the immigration process ever since Ted Kennedy screwed it up and said it wouldn’t change America’s demographics.
One my troops who fell for a foreign national while posted overseas brought here to America after marrying her overseas in Italy. She became first a legal immigrant after petitioning (and waiting for four years just for the bureaucracy to plod through all to process all the various forms and background checks) for a CR1 visa, “green card” as a conditional legal permanent resident spouse married to an American citizen for less than three years. I helped him decipher (and that’s an accurate term), all the forms and steps starting with the initial “I-130 Petition for Alien Relative”.
There is no way a legal immigrant or their spouse can do anything to shorten the bureaucratic dead time between application for a visa and that visa being granted – or denied for a specific reason. Everything is remotely web based: the applicants get terse one and two line instructions of what to do in the next step with links to a web portal and need to comply. At no point is a contact phone number, government email contact address, anything like an online chat function, etc available. The bureaucrats at the State Department have successfully insulated themselves from any human contact with immigration petitioners and applicants. The closest thing to assistance with their vagarities and cryptic messages is seeking the applicant seeking the assistance of one of their state senators or House members.
It is ironic that by the end of the State Department bureaucratic dead time waiting process, she could qualified for the IR1 resident visa she originally wasn’t married long enough to apply for at the beginning of the process. Those visas don’t include the additional conditions and expenses that an immigrant who enters under the CR1 visa has to satisfy. She would have had sufficient time (three years under an Immediate Relative visa) if she’d been able to apply for that instead, to have applied for American citizenship and have voted for the first time as an American citizen in the 2024 election.
Again; excellent – a thought provoking response to all the Professor Munshi’s out there within the Democrat party, the Democrat mainstream media, and the Democrat apparatchiks here. If you ever decide to publish a blog, let us know where to subscribe.
Excellent post.
Oh wow, so the latest 2025 model of Dem Immigration (legal and illegal) is out for public viewing? Fabulous to see a fresh coat of paint on their steaming pile of feces with new marketing slogans so it can pretend to be academic!! Nothing like DEI Moron PhD’s using illusion and guilt-selling to make weak American Woke Minds “reimagine” stupidity over and over!
Perhaps it is time to get rid of law schools–and education schools and journalism schools–altogether. All those fields would be much better served by going back to what they once were: an apprenticeship model of a bright person working under an experienced practitioner to learn their craft. And all have been corrupted or ruined by being forced into the 19th century German model of university education that the US adopted about 130 years ago, a model developed for other purposes and as we now see, totally unsuited for these purposes.
I stayed home today. Bad storms, and the roads are a mess. I am awake, and fully caffeinated! This stupid professor deserves an Irish Poem! Talk about an educated but stupid person! What does this dribble even mean – ““Our task, as I put it, is to unsettle the border, to defamiliarize, disenchant, and recontextualize it by critically evaluating the historical processes, the legal developments, the discursive formations that naturalize and legitimate the border.” It’s like this person is a female boxer, and has ended up punch-drunk! Penelope has always said that lawyers, who can not express their ideas in simple English, are not very competent.
Bordering On Insanity???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There was a professor named Munshi,
Whose panties got all in a bunchy!
She’d claim with great zeal,
That “borders” weren’t real-
But brainwise – she seemed rather punchy!
Note 1: Punchy, in a slang sense, means punch-drunk.
Good one Squeeky!
Squeeky,
Good one!
As per my own brief forays into alternate states of consciousness as a one time ‘whitelighter,’ total equality is a function of the unconscious mind and consciousness may be defined as the “ability to discriminate.” I seriously question the state of consciousness of anyone who tries to tell me that able equals disabled, black equals white, male equals female or any other such ridiculous comparison. While all human beings are human beings there exists a serious problem with the cultures of their origins; not all cultures are equal and America has a natural right to discriminate against inferior cultures, at least while we still have some remnant of a superior, constitutional, culture. Even then, the US Constitution only attempts to ensure equal rights to all citizens and, thanks to centuries of diluting the constitutional culture of 1787, it is possibly contaminated beyond remedy. As to slavery in 1787, everyone makes mistakes and some have tried to remedy that. Yet, there remains cultural differences, largely due to oppression foisted upon all Americans by the ruthless rich who never pay their fair share of taxes; another undesirable culture. As I generally like to phrase it in my writings: “But for organized religion humanity probably would have evolved above and beyond greed, violence, war and overpopulation by now.” I welcome US borders as long as the rest of humanity lags behind our Founder’s basic intentions, principles, purposes and spirit, as clearly and concisely stated in the Preamble to the US Constitution.
Dear Mr. Turley, thanks again for your great article and a special thanks to GEB for my morning laugh!! My thought is this: we have to begin to teach our public school students the value of our Constitution. beginning in the elementary schools right up through 12th grade. Then our college students would be equipped to debate a professor such as the one mentioned here. This has been sorely lacking for years. As I was in school 50 years ago, back then I only had one semester on Government.
Beginning with Lincoln, America has been invaded when the battlespace must have been prepped for Americans.
American women stopped having American babies.
The population has become more foreign with each passing day.
The nation needs to start with making more actual Americans then teaching them what being American means.
You are so right.
Does she ever lock the door to her house, does she let anyone who wants to camp on her front lawn indefinitely?
“Our task, as I put it, is to unsettle the border, to defamiliarize, disenchant, and recontextualize it by critically evaluating the historical processes, the legal developments, the discursive formations that naturalize and legitimate the border.”
When somebody attempts to call a shovel an “ambidextrous, manually operated excavation instrument”, whether they’re a politician, a union boss writing a job description, or an educator, you don’t have to be a law student or a lawyer to know their primary intent with their choice of language is to cloud the issue with BS.
American intellectuals like Doctor Thomas Sowell, Doctor Walter Williams, Doctor Victor Davis Hanson, etc have no problem whatsoever analyzing and detailing issues using language so simple and basic that Americans still in high school can read and understand.
Professor Munshi’s choices with language to express herself isn’t a result of lacking the mental capability to communicate. Nor can it be written off as “intellectuals” – a category that includes Sowell, Williams, and Hanson. No, it’s a result of her deliberate choice to obfuscate; to cloud what is obviously a dishonest Marxist agenda that adds to Democrat attempts to tear down the load bearing foundations of our republic in order for Marxist theology to replace the Constitution.
Is this some kind of a joke?
“Witch Doctor” types were Doctor Thomas Sowell and Doctor Walter Williams?
The plagiarist, fraud, and philanderer renditions, such as Marty Kinky?
Quite possibly, you incoherently confuse affirmative action with merit.
Ha ha ha. This is actually pretty funny. Those professors can do whatever they want. Some of them have really lost credibility over the years with their whacked ideas of atheism and the 100 genders.
In the not too distant past, a wagon would arrive with men in white suites to put the professor in a straight jacket and escort her to her rubber room.
E.M.
That is the problem with all this inclusive nonsense. We now not only have to suffer these idiots but are expected to take them seriously.
Desperate to prove herself equal to her credentials, Professor Munshi applies Ovarian Reasoning to borders, a formative creation of natural selection, and declares them the subjective work of man.
Next up: The paternalistic, indoctrinatory roots of baby fever.
Why can Americans cry about their border with Mexico, wanting the invasion to be taken seriously enough to send in troops, but when Ukrainians cry about Russians crossing their border, some very cold, cruel, and callous Americans don’t care? It is hypocritical.
Are you willing to fight on the frontlines, send your kids to fight on the frontlines, or send your own hard earned money to Zelensky for his unaudited use? If you can’t honestly say yes then STFU.
Are you willing to risk WWIII and nuclear annihilation over a border dispute half the way around the world? If you can’t honestly say yes then STFU.
Borders are what wars are fought over, if the Ukranian people can’t keep it where it is, it will move. Same story throughout history.
Interesting that ATS refers to wanting peace, and wanting the bloodshed to end, as cold and cruel. I guess that’s how he got the nickname ATS.
OldManFromKS,
Well said. What is cold and cruel is to continue to support this war so more and more people can die.
Did anybody vote for that goofy professor? I didn’t vote for her, I voted for Donald Trump. Now we have 20M+ illegals to deport. Let’s get to it. First the worst, next the rest.
We first heard from Professor Sherally Munshi back in Trump’s first term, when Professor Munshi claimed that Trump’s extension of Obama’s previous entry ban to nationals of specified nations had supposedly become “Trump’s Muslim ban”. This analysis and proclamation is from another Georgetown University constitutional law professor expert.
To be more precise, Professor Munshi is one of Professor Turley’s fellow Washington DC Democrat lawyers. Both are members of the Washington DC Bar Association, both are Democrats, and both are Georgetown law professors (and of course, constitutional experts). Professor Turley focuses on the First Amendment, while his faculty partner Professor Munshi focuses on unconstitutional immigration laws.
The debates professors Turley and Munshi have at both the Georgetown University faculty liquor bar and at the Washington DC Bar Association meetings must be fascinating to watch. I for one would be incredibly interested to read a report from Professor Turley on how those debates between the two of them go.
Yet again we see that, while not all of our nation’s problems are due to Professor Turley’s fellow Democrat lawyers from their Washington DC Bar Association, but certainly a majority of them are.
I do hope Professor Turley spends at least some of his time while at the liquor bar or Association Bar with his peer Professor Munshi attempting to convince her that her constitutional analysis pronouncements and actions are wrong as she advocates at Georgetown and across the country for open borders.
Turley teaches at GWU, not Georgetown
I do believe Professor Turley teaches at George Washington University Law School, my alma mater. Saying he is a Professor at Georgetown Law School is defamation.
Sorry to be unsympathetic to Professor Munshi, but many feel lawyers have fungible morals, while others have shed them altogether. In the present case, we must ask for this lawyer’s current client list to understand her current set of morals. Of course, she could be one of those very rare professors that knows everything.
Professor Sherally Munshi’s ridiculous open borders theory will be examined tomorrow when four mayors from Chicago, New York, Boston, and Denver appear before Congress to explain why they are sheltering illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes in their cities and why they do not honor ICE detainers for their arrest and deportation. They will, I’m sure, regurgitate the old saw that the immigrant community will not trust or work with the police if it fears arrest and deportation, etc. This myth was dismissed decades ago when sociologists documented that immigrant criminals more often than not are predators of those in their immigrant communities. The people in these communities want safety and want these thugs removed and deported. Many come to the U.S. to escape what these goofy mayors are forcing upon them. As usual, the liberal left has this backwards. The mayors who appear tomorrow will be bucking the views of their constituents, as well as the immigrant criminals that they are protecting. They probably guarantee their own political demise by opposing what 70 percent or more of their voters want.
I need to correct a typo in my penultimate sentence. It should end with “as well as the immigrant COMMUNITIES that they are protecting.”
JJC,
Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I will look for transcripts or videos of what transpires. And thank you for pointing out their failed Democrat policies that lead to increase in crime and violence. I just read that Portland OR is facing a Dysentery crisis from two different forms of Shigella bacteria due to more of their failed Democrat policies involving homeless and sanctuary city status.
Upstate: Yes, that once great state is a mess. I think Trump will prove to the masses that his way is the better way and we may see more and more converts as the cities get less and less safe and issues like fecal contamination and diseases that were wiped out ages ago begin to make a comback because of primitive conditions. There’s a certain commonality among all people for safe, clean, and attractive communities. Have faith, reason will eventually surface.
Haven’t all groups believed in territory or lands that were exclusively theirs? Native Americans fighting each other and then the settlers entering their hunting or fishing grounds, pre-colonial African tribes and clans battling over water rights, and hunting grounds, etc. Even the concept of the Old Testament “Promised Land” incorporates the concept of exclusion. It seems history and logic have no place in Georgetown Law’s faculty. I wonder how they teach the historic basis of common law property rights.
If borders don’t exist, I suggest she get transferred to the university of North Korea or Gaza University. These neo-Marxist American hating professors are a cancer on our educational system
of which they don’t exist.
You hate liberals so what makes them any different than you?
“You hate liberals so what makes them any different than you?”
1. Why do you communists think describing yourselves as “liberals” makes you either truly liberals or something other than communists?
2. Is it deliberate that you portray being laughed at, jeered, mocked and despised as supposedly Democrat-level hatred?
Sounds like the essence of an anarchistic mindset.
“I fight authority; authority always wins…”
John Cougar Mellencamp