A Temple Law Community Conversation Immigration, Birthright Citizenship, and Current Issues Impacting International Students

Moderated by Professor Donald Harris

Monday, November 10, 2025
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Klein Hall – Room K2B

Lunch will be served

About the event

As part of its “America First” agenda, the Trump administration has placed significant focus on immigration, imposing new barriers to entry and new restrictions on activities while here. Related to this agenda is President Trump’s push to eliminate birthright citizenship. In this Community Conversation, Professor Donald Harris will moderate a discussion among Associate Dean Jennifer Lee, Professor Peter Spiro, and Assistant Dean John Smagula about these issues and their impact on international students.

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ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Jennifer J. Lee

Associate Dean for Experiential Learning and Community Engagement
Associate Professor of Law

Jennifer Lee directs the Social Justice Lawyering Clinic at the Sheller Center for Social Justice, where she works with law students to represent individuals and organizations on critical issues affecting low-income individuals in the region, with a particular focus on low-wage workers and immigrants. The clinic docket consists of employment cases at all stages of proceedings before the state and federal courts and the representation of grassroots organizations, legal nonprofits, and other entities involved in policy and legislative reform efforts, media advocacy, and community education. In conjunction with such partners, the clinic has worked on issues such as family detention, language access in the state court system, and temp workers. She received the Crystal Eastman Award for her clinic’s work on wage theft, including for the report Shortchanged, which exposes the problem of wage theft in Pennsylvania.

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Lee’s scholarship focuses on low-wage workers and immigrant rights, with a special interest in the ways that immigration status intersects employment and labor rights. Her recent publications have examined immigrant workers and their social mobilization, the regulation of wage theft, and low-wage migrant workers and their participation in temporary visa worker programs (“guest worker” programs). In 2020, Lee received the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Minority Law Teacher’s Section of the AALS, which honors a junior faculty member for their activism, teaching, and scholarship. In 2022, Lee received Temple Law School’s George P. Williams Award as “Outstanding Professor of the Year.” She also visited at the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City as a García-Robles Fulbright Scholar to work on issues confronting temporary visa workers and comparative child migrant detention policies and practices.

Prior to joining the Temple faculty, Lee was a farm worker attorney in Colorado and North Carolina, where she represented farm workers in wage and hour, civil rights, human trafficking, and immigration cases. For her work, Lee and her colleagues were awarded the Paul & Sheila Wellstone Award to Combat Human Trafficking and the Cesar Chavez Organizational Leadership Award. Earlier in her career she was a visiting clinical professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Colorado, a Clifton Everett Fellow at Legal Aid of North Carolina, and a Staff Attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services. Lee clerked for the Hon. Franklin Van Antwerpen in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania following her graduation from law school.

Peter J. Spiro

Charles R. Weiner Professor of Law

Peter J. Spiro holds the Charles Weiner Chair in international law. Before joining Temple’s faculty in 2006, Professor Spiro was Rusk Professor of Law at the University of Georgia Law School. A former law clerk to Justice David H. Souter of the U.S. Supreme Court, Spiro specializes in international, immigration, and constitutional law. Spiro is the author of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization (Oxford University Press 2008), At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship (NYU Press 2016), and Citizenship: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2019). He has contributed commentary to such publications as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, and is frequently quoted in the media on international and immigration law issues.

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Spiro has held fellowships at the European University Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Open Society Institute. In the fall 2018, Spiro was the William and Patricia Kleh Visiting Professor in International Law at Boston University Law School. He has also held visiting appointments and residencies at the University of Texas, the Australian National University, the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and Sungkyunkwan University. Spiro is a member of the International Mobility Treaty Commission and the Investment Migration Council, and a former member of the U.S. Department of State’s Historical Advisory Committee. He has delivered recent keynote lectures at the University of Sydney, Erasmus University, and Princeton University. In 2016, he co-organized a workshop on global migration law at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center. In 2007 and 2016 surveys, Professor Spiro ranked in the top 25 nationally among international law scholars on the basis of academic citation frequency.

In addition to his 1990-91 Supreme Court clerkship, Spiro served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen F. Williams of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He has also served as director for democracy on the staff of the National Security Council, as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Legal Adviser and as a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Spiro holds a B.A. from Harvard College and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

John Smagula

Assistant Dean, Graduate & International Programs

John Smagula is Assistant Dean for Graduate and International Programs at Temple Law, where he leads the school’s global legal education initiatives. He oversees Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs, international partnerships, study abroad, and student and faculty exchanges, and he drives innovation in international law school program design, academic strategy, and cross-border engagement.

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He has worked extensively with legal educators and institutions worldwide and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, Italian, and Spanish. He frequently presents at international law schools and conferences on legal education and global program development.

From 2003 to 2018, Dean Smagula directed Temple Law’s China Rule-of-Law Program. He previously taught law at leading universities and practiced corporate law in the New York and Hong Kong offices of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, as well as at Totti & Rodriguez Diaz in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

He holds a B.A. in International Relations from Pomona College, a J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, and an M.S. in Education from Temple University, with a focus on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Dean Smagula also directs Temple Law’s Tea Club and tea education program, the first of its kind, promoting cultural learning and wellness among students through the study of global tea traditions. A Certified Tea Specialist in both the U.S. and China, he is regularly invited to speak on the intersection of tea, culture, and education.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Donald P. Harris

Professor of Law
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Liaison

Donald P. Harris is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Liaison at Temple University Beasley School of Law.

A specialist in international intellectual property, Dean Harris joined Temple University Beasley School of Law in 2003, and teaches in the areas of intellectual property and commercial law. His courses include: Introduction to Intellectual Property, International Intellectual Property, Patents, and Uniform Commercial Code: Sales. He received his J.D. from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, where he received the dean’s award for outstanding public service and the pro bono service award. Dean Harris also received an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin, as a Hastie Fellow, specializing in international intellectual property.

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Prior to joining Temple, Dean Harris practiced intellectual property law, specializing in patent litigation, as an associate in the San Francisco office of Cooley Godward. Dean Harris has spoken at numerous symposia and colloquia, and has written numerous articles on international intellectual property, including articles discussing the international intellectual property treaty, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).