Race and Rights Podcast

Host Sahar Aziz is in conversation with scholar and organizer Dr. Maha Hilal as she unpacks two decades of the War on Terror and its devastating impact on Muslim communities. This eye-opening episode, based on Dr. Hilal's book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11 , explores how government narratives have been weaponized to build a...

Sahar Aziz speaks with Josh Paul about the law, politics, and policies surrounding the United States decades long military aid to Israel and specifically how such aid makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza since October 2023.  Josh Paul resigned from the State Department due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to...

Dr. Audrey Truschke and Professor Ivan Kalmar analyze the alarming global surge in Islamophobic violence and discriminatory policies, particularly in Eastern Europe and South Asia.   Our guests explore how economic and political insecurities have fueled dangerous scapegoating of Muslim citizens and refugees, transforming vulnerable religious minorities into targets of state-sanctioned persecution....

Prisons are a microcosm of how carceral apartheid operates as a larger governing strategy to decimate political targets and foster deceit, disinformation, and division in society. White supremacy within the institutional conditions in US prisons produces a power dynamic of racist intent in the prison system that culminates in what Professor Brittany Friedman terms carceral apartheid.  Host Sahar A...

In January of 2025, the human rights organization, Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) , made a formal request with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate former U.S. officials President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for their accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crime...

In the Global South, the possibility of a post-imperial reality self-determined by former subjects of the empire has been undermined by the dominant Western narrative that centers “humanitarian initiatives, politics of counterterrorism, and migration control”. Host Sahar Aziz will speak with expert, advocate and Law Professor Dr. Asli U. Bali to deconstruct the mainstream narrative that portrays t...

Autonomy and self-determination for all individuals cannot be realized and sustained unless true within every person. Enslavement and dehumanization remain true of citizens of imperial nations so long as they remain true for colonized peoples. This week’s episode explores the contradictions between stated commitments to human rights and actions in Western and post-colonial societies. Host Sahar Az...

This episode of the Race and Rights podcast features Professor Sherene Razack discuss how racialized Muslim bodies and gender are constructed by global white supremacy that produces and sustains networks, affinities and ideas in the so-called Global War on Terror.  Sherene Razack is a Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of California Los...

Syria's complex history and politics led to the overthrow of Bashar Al Assad on December 8, 2024 – as unexpected as the Arab Spring revolutions that gripped the Middle East thirteen years earlier.   Located at the center of regional competition, the nation of Syria will continue to experience foreign intervention from its neighbors, as well as the United States.  Meanwhile, the millions of Sy...

Let’s take stock of the American experience within the global history of colonialism – specifically by examining the intertwined relationship in U.S. constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power and expansion. This episode reinterprets American political traditions from the colonial period to modern times by placing race, immigration, and national sec...

This week’s episode offers a powerful introduction to the scope of Islamophobia in the United States. The legacy of Barack Obama and the mainstream media’s typically negative portrayals of Muslims offer incisive examples into the vast impact of Islamophobia – connected to the long history of racism – both within the borders of the United States, and as a matter of foreign policy and global politic...

In the face of pervasive racial violence in American society, the effort to address and subdue white supremacist extremism has been underserved by the framing of “hate crimes,” and the movement to re-frame these events as domestic terrorism, as these terms do not meet the heavy task of eliminating the perpetuation of institutional oppression.  Host Sahar Aziz will discuss with Law Professor Shirin...

A complex array of domestic, regional, and international factors contributed to the rise of Hafez Al Assad as president of Syria in 1970 and the ultimate demise of his son, Bashar Al Assad on December 8, 2024 – thirteen years after the Syrian people unsuccessfully rose up peacefully as part of the regional phenomena commonly referred to as the Arab Spring.  Located at the center of geopolitical co...

In what a growing consensus of international legal scholars describe as a genocide , the systematic destruction of Gaza by the Israeli military has killed over 55,000 Palestinians and injured over 100,000 Palestinians in less than 15 months.  The Israeli government’s severe restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into the blockaded Gaza Strip have produced unprecedented malnutrition, disease...

On December 8, 2024, the Syrian people overthrew Bashar Al Assad, bringing to an end a brutal fifty-four-year dictatorship.  Although the Syrian people partook in the wave of revolutions during the Arab Spring, their efforts to bring about democracy in Syria were hijacked by a host of external actors in what deteriorated into a violent proxy war between Russia, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the...

The present state of the unfulfilled peace brokering process between Palestine and Israel stands to undermine any meaningful progression toward the two-state solution proffered by dominant actors in the West. Host Sahar Aziz , in discussion with the former Egyptian Ambassador Hesham Youssef, explores the argument that Western ambivalence to the issue of Palestinian sovereignty has significantly er...

The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Israel has effectively blinded it to the most detrimental factors to the dissolution of the peace-brokering process, most notably the impact of Israeli occupation on Palestinian sovereignty and the legitimacy of international human rights law. Host Sahar Aziz will discuss these complex dynamics with author and political scientist Khaled Elgindy by de...

The indeterminate and contested nature of the terms of international law indicate a prevalent concern regarding the legitimacy of international law in the context of Israel’s war with Hamas and the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip. Host Sahar Aziz explores this topic with Law Professor and expert on Middle Eastern studies Dr. George Bisharat to dissect the prevalent inconsistencies in e...

Since October 8, 2023, the Israeli military has killed over 41,000 Palestinians , severely injured over 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and destroyed the medical infrastructure in what international legal scholars have described as a genocide .  Israel has also severely restricted the entrance of food and medical supplies from the Gaza Strip, resulting in the massive starvation of over 2 million Pal...

Host Sahar Aziz invites Professor Juliane Hammer to discuss her book Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence that addresses how Muslim advocacy work against domestic abuse is embedded in and challenged by systems of anti-Muslim hostility and racism while also having to contend with changing notions of gender norms and practices. Based on ethnographic research and textu...

What legal and extra-legal challenges did Ottoman Syrian Muslim immigrants face when they immigrated to the American Midwest before World War I? What opportunities did they have? Join our host Sahar Aziz in her discussion with Professor Edward Curtis to learn how these Midwesterners built their communal power, creating a life that was American, Arab, and Muslim all at the same time.  #Muslims #Isl...

Drawing on a global and comparative ethnography, Professor Heba Gowayed explores how Syrian men and women seeking refuge in a moment of unprecedented global displacement are received by countries of resettlement and asylum—the U.S., Canada, and Germany. It shows that human capital, typically examined as the skills immigrants bring with them that shape their potential, is actually created, transfor...

The U.S. Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v. Wade has rightfully triggered a national debate about the role of religion in lawmaking, women's rights to control their reproductive health, and the racially disparate impact of state prohibitions on abortion. Join our host Sahar Aziz and legal scholars Asifa Quraishi-Landes , and Cynthia Soohoo on the legal, political, and social implicatio...

Since the early 1960s, incarcerated Muslims have used legal action to establish their rights to religious freedom and improve their conditions behind bars – ultimately safeguarding the civil rights not only of imprisoned Muslims but all people who are confined in a carceral setting.  In this episode, University of Pittsburgh School of Law Professor SpearIt discusses his book “ Muslim Prisoner Liti...

It is possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and to also be discriminatory. Understanding the hard truth of Latino anti-Black bias is critical for fostering a multiracial democracy. Host Sahar Aziz discusses these issues with “ Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality ” author and Fordham School of Law Professor Tanya Kat...