Prof. Paul Kramer is an historian and writer who teaches modern US history at Vanderbilt University, with an emphasis on issues of race, gender, economic and transnational inequality, and the United States’ intersections with the wider world. He has written for the New Yorker, Slate, Foreign Affairs and other venues on the origins of the US naval base at Guantanamo, the ambiguities of the US-Mexico border, the politics of torture, and debates over immigration, has received support from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting for “Desert, Storm,” an investigation into the ways the Iraq War and “war on terror” shaped responses to Hurricane Katrina. He is the author of a prize-winning book on early 20th century US colonialism, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines, and is currently at work on a book dealing with the history of American debates about immigration. He can be reached at paulkrameronline.com.