Rate My Professor J.C. Salyer

J.C. Salyer serves as Associate Professor of Practice in Anthropology and Human Rights and Director of the Human Rights Program at Barnard College. He earned his Ph.D. and M.Phil. from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, a J.D. from Georgia State University College of Law, and a B.A. from the University of Georgia. An anthropologist and practicing lawyer, Salyer is also the staff attorney at the Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn, New York, where he directs the immigration clinic. Notably, the organization is the only one in the country assisting refugees in repaying their travel loans to reach the United States, helping them integrate faster.

Salyer's scholarly work centers on law and society, immigration law, climate change, and social justice. His current research investigates migration, human rights, and sovereignty issues stemming from Australia's Operation Sovereign Borders policy, particularly the detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. He co-organized the three-year Pacific Climate Circuits symposium at Columbia University's Center for the Study of Social Difference, exploring climate change in the Pacific through social sciences and humanities lenses. Salyer is the author of Court of Injustice: Law Without Recognition in U.S. Immigration (Stanford University Press, 2020), an ethnographic study of immigration courts in New York City. His articles include "The Denial of Human Dignity in the Age of Human Rights under Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders" (The Contemporary Pacific 32, 2021) and, with Paige West and Steffen Dalsgaard, "'It Is Not Because They Are Bad People': Australia’s Refugee Resettlement in Papua New Guinea and Nauru" (The Contemporary Pacific 32:2, 2020). In 2019, he received an honor from the Arab-American Family Support Center and Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams for his dedication to the Arab-American community and cross-cultural initiatives. Additionally, Salyer co-directed the Center for the Study of Social Difference working group on Migrant Personhood and Rights: Crises of Recognition.