Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics

Each year the Wayne Morse Center hosts two UO faculty members as Resident Scholars, one from the School of Law and one from another UO department in an appropriate discipline related to the current Morse Center theme. Resident Scholars help frame the theme, advise the Center on programs, and work on academic writings.

For information about applying for future Resident Scholar positions, please refer to our application instructions. The Wayne Morse Center announces calls for Resident Scholar Applications in the Fall of each year to be reviewed in January-February of the following new year.

The Morse Center is pleased to announce that the Resident Scholars for 2008-09
are Michelle McKinley and Daniel HoSang.

Michelle McKinley
Assistant Professor of Law

Michelle will continue her groundbreaking research on race, gender and cultural citizenship as a Wayne Morse Resident Scholar during 2008-09. Her project is entitled Bringing in Outsiders: Cultural Citizenship in Refugee and Asylum Law. She critically examines a new generation of refugee litigation focused on gender and culture, using the legal ambivalence of the refugee to explore critical aspects of our debate on citizenship.

Professor McKinley joined the UO law faculty in 2007. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. McKinley has been active internationally, serving as the Managing Director of Cultural Survival, an advocacy and research organization dedicated to indigenous peoples. She is currently working on a research project on disenfranchised lower-caste and enslaved women in the colonial legal system in Peru.

Daniel HoSang
Assistant Professor
Political Science and Ethnic Studies

The Wayne Morse Center is honored to welcome a remarkable young scholar, Dan HoSang, as a Resident Scholar for 2008-09. His project, Race, Direct Democracy and the Future of Civil Rights, he explores the way that ballot initiatives related to race, such as affirmative action and immigration policy, shape the terrain of state and national politics. His award-winning dissertation focused on California electoral initiatives, and he is completing a book on the subject entitled, Racial Proposition: Genteel Apartheid in Postwar California.

As Resident Scholar, he will begin to turn his lens to Oregon and the northwest, seeking to trace the origin and development of the current “colorblind consensus” on race. Dr. HoSang earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2007. He has published several articles on race and American political development, political engagement of youth, and Asian Americans in the political process. HoSang is a public intellectual and activist with numerous community organizations.

The Resident Scholars for 2007-08 are Garrett Epps and Gordon Lafer.

Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps is the 2007-08 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar and Orlando John and Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law, University of Oregon. He will research the legislative history of the birthright citizenship guarantee of the 14th Amendment, a crucial issue in light of debates over increased immigration. The research follows Garrett's intriguing research that led to his recent book, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, that recently won a 2007 Oregon Book Award. His project is potentially foundational work with important implications for law and policy.

Epps organized and spoke at a symposium entitled, “Immigration and Citizenship” on January 25, 2008. Invited guests were Kevin R. Johnson from UC-Davis School of Law, Hiroshi Motomura from UNC School of Law and Dr. John Eastman currently Dean and Donald P. Kennedy Chair in Law at Chapman University School of Law.

Professor Epps publishes regularly in popular media.
Recent works by Garrett Epps include:

Resident Scholars - Current