Islamophobia is Racism: Syllabus to initiate discussion, learning

FACULTY Q&A Evelyn Alsultany In response to anti-Muslim racism, a group of interdisciplinary scholars across the country have come together to create the #IslamophobiaIsRacism syllabus to provide resources for teaching and learning. The University of Michigan's Evelyn Alsultany is one of the professors who worked on the syllabus. She teaches courses on Islamophobia, racism and 9/11, and is director of Arab and Muslim American Studies, author of "Arabs and Muslims in the Media" and organizer of the Islamophobia Working Group at U-M. Q: How did the scholars contribute to this' What are some of the key features of the syllabus? Alsultany: We are a group of 10 scholars from across the country that collaborated on this online syllabus. Lara Deeb, who is a professor at Scripps College, contacted us in November 2016 to begin organizing this project. Our main intervention to the conversation about Islamophobia is that it needs to be understood as a form of racism. Therefore, we refer to the syllabus as the #IslamophobiaIsRacism syllabus.