The Guarded Gate tells the story of the scientists who argued that certain nationalities were inherently inferior, providing the intellectual justification for the harshest immigration law in American history. Brandished by the upper class Bostonians and New Yorkers—many of them progressives—who led the anti-immigration movement, the eugenic arguments helped keep hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and other unwanted groups out of the US for more than 40 years.
In the program video below, author Dan Okrent, the first public editor of The New York Times and author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition discusses his newest book with Jack Kliger, President & CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.