Reihan Salam | What Makes a Nation? The Case Against Open Borders

Reihan Salam is the executive editor of National Review and a fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. A graduate of Harvard University, he writes as a columnist for Slate and as a contributing editor at National Affairs and The Atlantic. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs, including NPR's Morning Edition, and All Things Considered, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the BBC’s Newsnight, and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. He is the author of Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders.

Beginning in 2010, and coinciding with the opening of Hillsdale College’s Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Capitol Hill, the College has hosted an annual Constitution Day Celebration in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.

Hillsdale College is an independent institution of higher learning founded in 1844 by men and women “grateful to God for the inestimable blessings” resulting from civil and religious liberty and “believing that the diffusion of learning is essential to the perpetuity of these blessings.” It pursues the stated object of the founders: “to furnish all persons who wish, irrespective of nation, color, or sex, a literary, scientific, [and] theological education” outstanding among American colleges “and to combine with this such moral and social instruction as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of its pupils.” As a nonsectarian Christian institution, Hillsdale College maintains “by precept and example” the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith.

The College also considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law.

By training the young in the liberal arts, Hillsdale College prepares students to become leaders worthy of that legacy. By encouraging the scholarship of its faculty, it contributes to the preservation of that legacy for future generations. By publicly defending that legacy, it enlists the aid of other friends of free civilization and thus secures the conditions of its own survival and independence.