I once tried to jump out of a plane. High above the Atlantic Ocean, on a commercial airliner headed to Germany in 1999, I made my way to the back exit and attempted to open the door. A flight attendant swiftly intercepted me, grabbing my hand and asking what I was doing.
“I just need to get out,” I told her.
Continue reading: https://theamericanscholar.org/deleting-delusions
Like countless educators across America, I have completed active shooter training. The public university where I teach requires it. Officially, I have been instructed on how to run, hide and fight in order to ensure that my students and I survive in the event that an aspiring assassin enters our classroom.
Unofficially, I am as thoroughly prepared to survive a mass shooting as I am to perform an appendectomy. That is to say, not at all, because I am a professor of creative writing and a lawyer by trade. Hence, survival combat, like general surgery, falls decidedly outside my range of expertise.
Continue reading: https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2021/06/08/colleges-failure-mandate-suicide-prevention-training-ignorant-and-reckless-opinion
Letters of recommendation have aggravated me for more than 20 years. Today, as the spring admissions season draws to a close, I break my silence. Having been on every side of the LOR equation — requesting them, reading them, writing them, regarding them and disregarding them — I now call for an end to them. Not just at academic institutions, but at every institution that has historically discriminated against applicants on any basis besides merit. Shameless tributes to America’s longstanding commitment to inequity, letters of recommendation belong in the dustbin of history.
Read MoreFive years ago, in an act of creative desperation, I decided to immerse myself in the classical Persian poetry I grew up taking for granted. I aimed to learn it by heart and under the expert tutelage of my father, a physician by trade and a connoisseur of Sufi poetry by tradition. For my father, nothing is more sacred than poetry — specifically the mystical poetry of Rumi.
Read MoreBeing Iranian American is like being the child of divorced parents who refuse get along, not even for the kids. Growing up as one of these embattled children, conflict embedded in my DNA, I’ve never known a moment when my two homelands have been anything short of archenemies. Thus, what most of the world experiences as an external, geopolitical conflict, I and my fellow Iranian Americans experience as an internal, deeply personal one. These are our parents you’re talking about, and we love them both, even when we hate them.
Read MoreConsidering its habit of staging coups and its criminal response to the immigration crisis, you might think I'd have lost faith in America. Here's why I haven't.
Read MoreOn Sunday, I joined more than a thousand demonstrators at Raleigh-Durham International Airport to oppose an unconstitutional executive order signed by President Donald Trump last week. The order attempts to block refugees from entering the United States for 120 days (or if they’re Syrian, indefinitely) and to prohibit U.S. entry to nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen) for 90 days.
Read MoreToday more than ever, love is in order. As an Iranian-American Muslim woman of color living with a disability, I grieve for our country given the results of the latest presidential election. I was born in the United States. I love this nation. I have studied its laws and its flaws. As an author, attorney and activist, I have fought with my words and actions to make it a better place. But only recently have I come to realize that fighting isn’t enough. Love is in order.
Read MoreIf ever there were an election cycle that has taken a nonrefundable toll on the American psyche, this is it. And as an American Muslim, it has been all the more taxing.
Read MoreMuslims are increasingly under attack—both from within and without, both domestically and globally. We are being slaughtered by those claiming to be Muslim but ignoring the most basic tenets of our faith, those forgetting the meaning of the words with which we begin every single prayer—calling on a most “compassionate” and “merciful” God. On the other hand, we are also being slaughtered by those duped into believing that these vicious so-called Muslims (who have dismissed and disgraced our faith by claiming it, building organizations they insist on calling “Islamic”) represent all Muslims.
Read More“You need to lower your expectations for your life.” By the time I first heard this, I had already graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, earned a master’s in public health and published my first book. I was 29 years old.
Read MoreBefore we even knew how many innocent lives were lost in the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, many were already rushing to lay blame. Media commentators, politicians and bystanders alike speculated out loud. Anyone who could do something like this, many agreed, couldn’t be one of us. Our kind could never be capable of such inhumanity. It must be a Muslim, a maniac, an immigrant, an other. And while the gunman claimed to be Muslim, and according to an ex-wife at least, appeared to have had bipolar disorder—he was also an American, born and raised.
Read MoreWhile I’ve never been especially fond of political correctness for its own sake, I’ve encountered enough well-meaning white people embarrassing themselves to know that a brief tutorial can’t hurt. For those who insist that they could never say anything racist because they are not racists, I present a quick reminder: Just because you didn’t intend for something to sound racist, doesn’t mean it isn’t, and just because you don’t think you’re a racist, doesn’t mean you’re not. I refer you to the Washington Redskins and every idiot who insists that Native Americans should be “honored” to be so warmly insulted. Newsflash: Determining whether this team’s name is racist is not up to anyone but Native Americans. If you are not Native American, your opinion on the issue is at best irrelevant. I know it’s hard for some to accept, but white people don’t get to determine what is and isn’t racist.
Read MoreI’m used to people telling me I don’t look like who I am. “You don’t look Muslim.” “You don’t look American.” “You don’t look like a feminist.” And of course, ever since I began writing and speaking about living with bipolar disorder: “You don’t look crazy.”
Read MoreWhen my husband and I moved from Atlanta to Raleigh in early 2012, we had no idea what we were in for. Naively, we assumed that moving north meant that we were headed to a more progressive state. We were wrong.
Read MoreLast week, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Raja’ee Fatihah, a Muslim-American Army reservist who was denied service at an Oktaha gun range based solely on his religion. According to the lawsuit, the Save Yourself Survival and Tactical Gun Range had posted a sign that read:
Read MoreAs someone who writes about the news, I can’t exactly ignore it. Still, lately, I have been tempted. So many of the breaking news alerts I receive on my phone now seem to have something to do with a certain leading political candidate saying hateful and ignorant things about me.
Read MoreAs the world marked Human Rights Day, some 67 years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we currently face a global human rights crisis that few even recognize. It is the consequence of an affliction that can make its victims self-destruct.
Read MoreI don’t speak Arabic. I rarely pray more than once a day. I don’t cover my hair. I curse. I sing. I dance. I paint my nails. I sport spaghetti straps. I love dogs. And if pork and alcohol didn’t smell so nasty to me, I’d have no trouble consuming either.
Read More“Bitch, I’m gonna kill you!” he yelled, so loudly that it woke us up in the apartment next door. There were no more words after that. The bangs and crashes spoke for themselves. My husband, Matthew, and I had never heard any fighting from Angela’s (not her real name) apartment before. We called the cops right away. After that, my instinct was to run to her rescue; Matthew’s instinct was to beg me not to follow mine.
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