Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is Professor of Religious Studies and Political Science at Northwestern University. She studies religion in politics, law, and public life. Her work has examined U.S. foreign and immigration policy, US borders, and the politics of dissent, diversity, freedom, secularism and pluralism. Her new book Heaven Has a Wall offers a new take on American borders, and will interest scholars of religion and politics, national security, migration and asylum, and US-Israel relations. For a short intro see here. En español. En français.
Other posts on the book here and here. Click on the cover for reviews and podcasts.
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd Heaven Has a Wall (University of Chicago Press 2025)
Beth Hurd is Professor and Chair of Religious Studies and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern. She has published books on the politics of secularism, religious freedom, and American borders. At Northwestern she co-directs the Global Religion Research Group and manages the Teaching Law & Religion Case Archive.
She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015), both published by Princeton. Her latest book, Heaven Has a Wall: Religion, Borders, and the Global United States was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025. Beth lives in Evanston with Ian Hurd, their young adult daughters, two dogs and two opinionated cockatiels.