Sahar Aziz - Author, Professor, and Advocate

Cornel West’s Resignation: When Anti-Black and Anti-Palestinian Racism Converge [New Arab]

It is no secret that Palestine is taboo in US academia. Harvard’s recent denial of tenure to renowned race scholar Cornel West is the most recent instance. For decades, Arab American faculty have faced tenure denial or termination; students have been reprimanded and some even criminally charged; and Middle East studies programmes are under constant threat of defunding. All based on the fallacious claim that teaching, research, and activism that brings to light Israel’s rampant violations of Palestinian human rights is axiomatically anti-Semitic. Big donors, alumni, and well-funded legal advocacy groups unabashedly command… Continue reading

The FBI’s Racialized Priorities Endangered Our Democracy [Medium]

Where was the FBI in the months leading up to the violent siege on the Capitol? Among the many questions surrounding this week’s jarring events, this one reveals the extent to which double standards in law enforcement threaten our nation’s security. For weeks, Donald Trump’s far right-wing supporters publicly called for and planned a protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6, the day Congress was to certify the election results. Officials knew the Proud Boys and QAnon may try to breach the Capitol perimeter. Yet when the day came, the… Continue reading

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Legacy of Empathy and Courage [Al Jazeera]

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life embodies the best of America. Her experiences of being a first-generation American, a religious minority, and a woman who overcame discrimination informed her jurisprudence. The grandchild of Jewish immigrants from Russia, Ginsburg understood how fear of violent pogroms caused her family to leave their home, along with hundreds of thousands of Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. She also appreciated the hope for a better life America offers its constant stream of newcomers. Despite the discrimination she faced, America was… Continue reading

A Domestic Terror Law Could Quash Political Dissent in US [Al Jazeera]

When President Trump announced his intention to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation, his disregard for the upsurge of white right-wing extremist violence was obvious. So, too, was his objective -quashing political opposition to his administration. Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is a far-left ideological movement opposed to fascists, neo-Nazis and far-right groups. A loose collective of individuals and local groups, it lacks a chain of command or designated leaders. Followers of this decentralised movement engage mostly in nonviolent activities such as protesting, giving speeches, tracking fascist groups and hanging… Continue reading

U.S. Leadership Needed on Syrian Refugee Crisis [Wilson Center]

Sixty percent of Syria’s population are either refugees or internally displaced. Of those thirteen million Syrians, nearly six million are refugees who fled to neighboring Middle Eastern nations—five times more than the one million in Europe and the U.S. Unable to return home and with minimal, if any, access to education, jobs, and health care in host countries; Syrian refugees are trapped in a legal and economic purgatory. The challenge facing the international community is whether it will stand by and watch as a generation of Syrians is lost to… Continue reading

Trump’s Doublespeak in Saudi Arabia [CNN]

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump, it is that he has no qualms about contradicting himself to get what he wants. In Saudi Arabia, he wanted a $110 billion arms deal – not to promote peace and tolerance, as he later proclaimed in his Sunday speech. Thus, his speech will not “be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East,” as he loftily put it, but rather a boost to the war that is ravaging it. Nor will Trump’s speech put an end to the … Continue reading

Trump’s Immigrant Ban Part of a Long, Sad Tradition [Fox News]

For all of his anti-establishment rhetoric, President Trump’s stance toward immigrants and Muslims is more of the same. Orientalism and Manifest Destiny have long animated American foreign policy and domestic treatment of its racial and religious minorities. Trump’s executive orders on Friday, effectively barring immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries, harks back to an era when holy wars were the currency for mass mobilization by the ruler. In the eleventh century, for example, Pope Urban II called on his people to defend the Byzantine Empire from encroaching Muslim armies. What became… Continue reading

The Expanding Jurisdiction of Egypt’s Military Courts [Carnegie Sada Journal]

Egypt’s ongoing expansion of military jurisdiction under the pretext of economic development and public safety is yet another indicator that its revolution was stillborn. Although the military has long been a key political player, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime has promoted the military to the helm of Egypt’s political and economic affairs. In parallel, there has been an unprecedented expansion of military trials of civilians to serve the interests of the military generals governing the country. Concerns over trying civilians in military courts have long been a priority for Egypt’s… Continue reading

Protest is Egypt’s Last Resort [New York Times]

Nearly three years after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is at a critical crossroads: Will it move toward democratization or regress into authoritarianism? With a vote on a new constitution slated for the next couple of months, and promises of parliamentary and presidential elections by summer, Egypt’s military-backed interim government claims it has a road map to correct the country’s deviation from the goals of the 2011 revolution. But the passage last week of a law effectively quashing the right to public protest suggests the opposite. According to… Continue reading

Egypt and Other Arab Democracies Will Not Survive Without Including More Women [Christian Science Monitor]

The Arab revolutions, and their aftermath, are a testament to the human spirit. In a matter of months, decades of corruption and injustice were confronted by the raw strength of women and men unified against a common dictator. Facing death, torture, and sexual assault at the hands of state police and government-hired thugs, people across the greater Middle East sought to shed the yoke of tyranny, as they demanded one simple human right – dignity. But once the revolutions ended and the transitional phase began, women were expected to return… Continue reading

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