The international refugee regime is in crisis. More persons are displaced from their homes by conflict and violence than at any time since World War II. New emergencies have pushed millions of people across borders; they join tens of millions more who are in situations of long-term displacement with little hope of returning home or finding permanent settlement elsewhere. The lecture will examine the premises of the international refugee regime - rescue, rights, inclusion, solutions, and responsibility-sharing - and argue for their continued relevance today. It will propose significant changes in current policies and practices to better protect tens of millions of displaced persons and to provide support to states and communities that have come to their assistance.

T. Alexander Aleinikoff, a leading scholar in immigration and refugee law, is currently on assignment with the U.N. Secretariat in New York. From 2010 to 2015, he served as the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva. Prior to his service with the U.N., he was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center (1997-2010), where he also served as dean (2004-2010). He was co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for President Barack Obama’s transition team, professor of law at the University of Michigan Law School from 1981 to 1997, and the general counsel, then executive associate commissioner for programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from 1994 to 1997. He has published numerous books and articles in the areas of immigration law, refugee law, citizenship, race, statutory interpretation, and constitutional law.

Julius Margolis, professor emeritus of economics at UCI helped establish UCI’s Center for Global Peace & Conflict Studies. The multidisciplinary research entity, housed in the social sciences, promotes scholarly, student and public understanding of international peace and conflict. The Margolis Lecture features well-known figures who have contributed knowledge and activism to peace and conflict studies, focusing particularly on arms control and conflict studies. CGPACS’ affiliated faculty and graduate students come from eight schools across campus and work on the complex of political/military, economic/environmental, and cultural/normative motives, processes, and consequences concerning both peace and conflict.