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The Irish Are Coming
The stories, struggles, and influence of the Irish in America
BUILDING AMERICA · THE IRISH BET THEIR FUTURE ON AMERICA'S REVOLUTION · 1700 - 1900 ·
Irish Arrival and American Prejudice
The U.S. Constitution says nothing about who controls immigration — and in a slaveholding republic, that silence shaped the fate of Irish paupers and free Black sailors alike.
Historian Dr. Kevin Kenny traces the Irish diaspora beyond the familiar famine story — revealing an Irish America that was Protestant before it was Catholic, and shaped by land hunger, labor, religion, and slavery's shadow.
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Irish Arrival and American Prejudice
The Irish Are Coming · Episode 2
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ABOUT THE GUEST
He came to America as an immigrant — and then spent 30 years writing its immigrant history.
Kevin Kenny, Ph.D., came to the United States as an immigrant, earned degrees at the University of Edinburgh and Columbia University, and now teaches at New York University, where he's Professor of History. His research sits at the intersection of immigration, slavery, and identity — how migration policy, race, and nationhood have shaped one another across two centuries of U.S. history.
EPISODE RESOURCES
"You could sum up the whole story of mass emigration with that image — the replacement of human beings by animals on the soil." — Dr. Kevin Kenny
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