By Lewis Loflin
Lewis Loflin here. Stephen Steinlight’s 2001 essay, excerpted below, nails a persistent thorn in the immigration debate: postmodernism’s push to dissolve borders and identity. I’ve tracked these currents before—my piece on Immigration Policy and Identity Politics digs into cultural clashes, while my take on Steinlight’s Problem of Muslim Immigration and the Rise of Islamism ties his warnings to real-world fallout, like the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing by Muslim immigrants. In 2025, with identity wars still raging, Steinlight’s critique of elite academics cheering the end of citizenship hits harder. Here’s his sharp take.
Extract from The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography: Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy by Stephen Steinlight, October 2001:
A growing clique of philosophical internationalists—mostly tenured academics shielded from real-world grit—rejects the idea that we should prioritize one cultural or national identity over the many humans hold. You’ll spot them at foundation-funded immigration policy conferences, their influence creeping up.
To them, old-school concepts like citizenship, full assimilation, or—perish the thought—patriotism are relics, awkward holdovers in a shrinking, borderless world with masses on the move. They argue these ideas lack merit today, urging us to embrace multiple identities, juggle conflicting allegiances, and let national loyalty fade. Multiple citizenship? They don’t just tolerate it—they see it as the pinnacle of global consciousness, a New Age cosmopolitan dream.
Ordinary people worldwide don’t buy this. They’re still gripped by tribalism, often the violent kind, from soccer riots across continents to massacres in Africa and the Balkans. Ethnocentrism endures into the new millennium, defying predictions of a higher human fraternity. It’s the heavyweight champ of human drives.
Billions more, uprooted by dire poverty, move out of necessity, not ideology. They lack the leisure to ponder supplanting tribes or nations. But a cadre of academic and legal dilettantes spins a postmodern tale where the nation-state—even open, pluralistic ones—is obsolete. They cheer the erosion of law, civic traditions, and border sanctity, once unquestioned, tossing “patriotism” around with a smirk. To them, this chaos is a grand conceptual leap.
Dr. Stephen Steinlight served over five years as Director of National Affairs (domestic policy) at the American Jewish Committee, then two and a half as a Senior Fellow there. He co-edited Fractious Nation: Race, Class and Culture in America at the End of the Twentieth Century (UC-Berkeley Press) and was recently named editor of South Asia: In Review. These views are his own, not AJC’s official stance on immigration.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article. The final edits and perspective are my own.
