*REPOST* How Hate Crime Laws Perpetuate Anti-Muslim Racism
Lecture with Professor Evelyn Alsultany
Location
Online
*REPOST* How Hate Crime Laws Perpetuate Anti-Muslim Racism – Online Event
Date & Time
April 19, 2023, 1:00 pm – 2:15 pm
Description
This event is hosted by the Department of Gender, Women's, + Sexuality Studies. The original event post is here.
In this talk, Professor Evelyn Alsultany will present research from her book, Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion. Prof.
Alsultany will focus on two cases in which Muslim youth were murdered
yet law enforcement refused to classify the murders as hate crimes: the
2015 murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina and the 2017 murder of Nabra Hassanen in
Reston, Virginia. Hate crime laws are intended to recognize the
persistence of racism and other forms of discrimination, so why would
law enforcement agencies be reluctant to label these cases of
anti-Muslim violence as hate crimes? Alsultany illustrates how the
denial of hate crimes contributes to the diminishment and denial of
anti-Muslim racism and, as such, should be understood as a form of
racial gaslighting—that is, a systematic denial of the persistence and
severity of racism. In conversation with those advocating for rethinking
the criminal justice system through prison abolition and restorative
justice, she argues that seeking state recognition for hate crimes
cannot provide justice given that the state is responsible for
constructing Muslims as a national security threat.
Professor Alsultany is is
a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims
in the US. media. She is the author of Broken: The Failed Promise of
Muslim Inclusion (NYU Press, 2022), which was listed as one of the 10
best scholarly books of 2022 by The Chronicle of Higher Education, and
Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 (NYU
Press, 2012). She is the co-editor of Arab and Arab American Feminisms:
Gender, Violence, and Belonging (Syracuse University Press, 2011),
winner of the Arab American National Museum’s Evelyn Shakir Book Award,
and Between the Middle East and the Americas: The Cultural Politics of
Diaspora (University of Michigan Press, 2013). Alsultany is an associate
professor in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the
University of Southern California’s Dornsife College. Prior to her
appointment at USC, she co-founded and served as the director of the
Arab and Muslim American Studies program at the University of Michigan.
Professor Alsultany has served as an educator and consultant for
Hollywood studios (Netflix, Amazon, NBC Universal) and co-authored
criteria, the Obeidi-Alsultany Test, to help Hollywood improve
representations of Muslims. She has published op-eds in The Hollywood
Reporter, Time, and Newsweek.
This
talk is part of a series on Arab and Muslim Experiences in the US
sponsored by the Provost's office and organized by Dr. Mejdulene
Shomali.
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