Dr. Sylvia Chan-Malik is a scholar of race and ethnic studies, American studies, women’s and gender studies, and religious studies. Her research focuses on the junctures of race, gender, and religion in struggles for justice in the U.S., with a focus on the history of Islam in America, Black American Islam, and Black-Asian intersections. She is a core faculty member in the Departments of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and affiliate graduate faculty for the Department of Religion at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is the author of Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color and American Islam (NYU Press, 2018), and is currently working on two book projects: (1) A Part of Islam: A Journey through Muslim America, which offers an essential history of Islam and Muslims the U.S. for a general audience, and (2) The Soul of Liberation: Race, Religion, and Struggles for Freedom in America, which examines the role of the soul and spirit in 20th-21st-century U.S.-based racial liberation movements. She speaks frequently on issues of U.S. Muslim politics and culture, Islam and gender, and racial and gender politics in the U.S., with her writing and commentary appearing in The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Slate, The Intercept, Middle East Eye, PRI, HuffPost, Patheos, Religion News Service, and more. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College (2001) and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2009).
Ousseina D. Alidou is Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Linguistics, Gender and Cultural Studies in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She directed the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University from 2009 to 2015. She is the author of Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, Political and Social Change and Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger, which was a runner-up for the Aidoo-Schneider Book Prize of Women’s Caucus of the Association of African Studies. She has co-edited numerous books including Writing through the Visual and Virtual in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean, Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Africa with Ahmed and A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities. In addition, she has published book chapters and articles which appear in Research in African Literatures, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika (SUGIA), Comparative Literature, Africa Today, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and Africa Today. Alidou is the recipient of several national and international scholarly and service awards including: African Studies Association Service Award (2016), Obafemi Awolowo Center for Gender and Social Policy Studies Distinguished Visiting Scholar Service Award (2015), Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award (2015), Newark Women-in-the Media Distinguished Community Service Award (2015), Rutgers University 2011 Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching, Africa America Institute’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2010), Ford Foundation Human Rights and Social Justice Grant Award (2005), Rutgers University Board of Trustee’s Scholarly Excellence Award (2005) and she currently serves as a Senior Advisor to UNESCO BREDA on Higher Education Curriculum on Gender and Transformative Leadership for African Universities and Civil Societies.
Email: oalidou@amesall.rutgers.edu
Maya Mikdashi is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a Lecturer in the Program for Middle East Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is the Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University, and also holds an MA from Georgetown University and a BA from the Lebanese American University in Beirut.
Maya is the author of Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism and the State in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2022), which was awarded Honorable Mention by the Michelle Rosaldo Biannual Book Prize at the Association for Feminist Anthropology, and won the Gregory Bateson Book Award from the Society for Cultural Anthropology, the Fatima Mernissi book award at the Middle East Studies Association, the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies Book Award, and the LGBTQ Caucus Book Award at the International Studies Association. Her scholarship has been translated into Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Spanish, Korean, French and German. She is on the editorial boards of Social Text and the Journal of Palestine Studies.
Maya is a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya, an electronic outlet dedicated to public scholarship, and scholarly journalism on the contemporary, transnational Middle East. She is a co-director of the feature-length documentary film About Baghdad (2003), Director of the documentary film Notes on the War (2006), and Assistant Director, Editor, and Cinematographer of the documentary series What is Said About Arabs and Terrorism (2007). In 2015 Maya collaborated with Carlos Motta on his film Deseos / رغبات, which she co-wrote and performed in. Before pursuing graduate school in the United States, Mikdashi worked in the television industry in Lebanon.
Email: maya.mikdashi@rutgers.edu
Sandy Russell Jones is an Associate Teaching Professor of Religion and History at Rutgers SAS NB. Her areas of interest are women and gender in religion; gender and concepts of divinity; Islamophobia; the intersection of religious and political authority; and Shi`i Islam. Courses she teaches on a regular basis are “Women and Gender in the Islamic Middle East;” “A History of Islamophobia;” “Islamic Civilization;” and “The Hero’s Quest: Religion, Mythology, and Harry Potter.” Her scholarship on debates over Islamic family law in Bahrain has appeared in The Middle East Report and Information Project and on Jadaliyya.com.
Professor Russell Jones served as director of the Undergraduate Program in Middle Eastern Studies from 2012-2021. For her focus on fostering understanding among faiths in her classroom and community, she received the 2018 Muslims for Peace Interfaith Award. Russell Jones previously received the RCHA Fellowship at RU NB (2010-2011); Fulbright IIE Program Dissertation Grant (2004-2005), Bahrain; Fulbright-Hays Fellowship (2004-2005), Bahrain (declined); American Research Center in Egypt Grant (2004-2005), Egypt; CASA Full-Year Fellowship (2001-2002), Egypt; and the U Penn Religious Studies Boardman Fellowship (2000).
She earned her Ph.D. (Islamic Studies) from the University of Pennsylvania, her B.A. (Religious Studies) from Dickinson College, and completed research and study abroad in Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Morocco. In local community life, Russell Jones serves as an Elder on the Consistory of The Reformed Church of Highland Park, as well as the RCHP Adult Education Committee; the Care (mental health support) Committee; and participates in various interfaith programs. She is also an LGBTQ+ Ally, activist, and writer; amateur drummer; D & D enthusiast; and backyard chicken mom.
Email: russjo@history.rutgers.edu
Sahar Aziz is Distinguished Professor of Law, Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar, and Middle East and Legal Studies Scholar at Rutgers University Law School. Professor Aziz’s scholarship adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine intersections of national security, race, and civil rights with a focus on the adverse impact of national security laws and policies on racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the U.S. Her research also investigates the relationship between authoritarianism, terrorism, and rule of law in the Middle East. She is the founding director of the interdisciplinary Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights (csrr.rutgers.edu) and a faculty affiliate of the African American Studies Department at Rutgers University-Newark Professor Aziz serves on the Rutgers-Newark Chancellor’s Commission on Diversity and Transformation as well as the editorial board of the Arab Law Quarterly and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Professor Aziz teaches courses on national security, critical race theory, Islamophobia, evidence, torts, and Middle East law.
Professor Aziz’s groundbreaking book The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom examines how religious bigotry racializes immigrant Muslims through a historical and comparative approach. She has published over thirty academic articles and book chapters. Her articles are published in the Harvard National Security Journal, Washington and Lee Law Review, Nebraska Law Review, George Washington International Law Review, Penn State Law Review, and the Texas Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Journal. Her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, CNN.com, Carnegie Endowment’s Sada Journal, Middle East Institute, Foxnews.com, World Politics Review, Houston Chronicle, Austin Statesmen, The Guardian, and Christian Science Monitor. She is a frequent public speaker and has appeared on CNN, BBC World, PBS, CSPAN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Al Jazeera English. She is an editor of the Race and the Law Profs blog. She previously served on the board of the ACLU of Texas and as a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution – Doha.
Professor Aziz earned a J.D. and M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas where she was as an associate editor of the Texas Law Review. Professor Aziz clerked for the Honorable Andre M. Davis on the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. In 2021, Professor Aziz was named a Soros Equality Fellow for her work in race, policing, and national security.
Email: sahar.aziz@law.rutgers.edu
Adnan A. Zulfiqar is an Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School and a Regional Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania’s Middle East Center. He is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of law, history and religion whose research focuses on critically examining the frameworks underlying legal discourses in both domestic and global contexts. His primary fields of inquiry are criminal law & procedure, Islamic jurisprudence, and rule of law in the Global South. His most recent work centers on studying how Muslim jurists conceive of and utilize legal duties, particularly in the context of revolution and war; rethinking approaches to the diffusion of human rights norms; and, exploring questions relating to police discretion in the United States. His scholarship has appeared in a number of publications, including the Yale Journal of International Law, Journal of Comparative Law (U.K.), NYU Journal of International Law & Politics, and the American Journal of Legal History.
Professor Zulfiqar previously received fellowships from the CASA Program in Syria (2007-08), the Harry Guggenheim Foundation (2014), and the Stanford Humanities Center (2022-23). From 2021-2023, he was a Commissioner on the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the city’s official civil rights agency.
He earned his J.D. (law), M.A. and Ph.D. (near eastern languages & civilizations) from the University of Pennsylvania, his M.L.S. (international affairs) from Georgetown University and a B.A. (religion and anthropology) from Emory University. He is proficient in multiple languages and has spent over a decade in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Email: adnan.zulfiqar@rutgers.edu