Professor KHALED A. BEYDOUN is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. He previously served on the UCLA School of Law faculty, and currently serves as affiliated faculty with the UC-Berkeley Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project. Professor Beydoun has extensive experience as an attorney, working within the realm of civil rights, criminal defense, and international law practice. A Critical Race Theory scholar, Professor Beydoun examines Islamophobia from a legal, race-based and intersectional perspective. His scholarship examines the racial construction of Arab and Muslim American identity, criminal and national security policing, and the intersection of race, religion and citizenship. His work has been featured in top law journals, including the California Law Review, the UCLA Law Review, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, and the Harvard Journal of Race & Ethnic Justice. A native of Detroit, Professor Beydoun earned his law degree from the UCLA School of Law, and his BA from the University of Michigan. His also holds a Master’s Degree from the University of Toronto. A regular commentator on pressing issues, Professor Beydoun contributes regularly to Al-Jazeera English, serves as an expert consultant for the US Census Bureau, and has featured his opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Salon and the BBC.
LAURIE GOODSTEIN has been the national religion correspondent for The New York Times for more than 20 years. She joined the Times after eight years at The Washington Post covering New York City, the Northeast and religion. She has received many top awards from the Religion News Association and other journalism organizations, and from the American Academy of Religion, the association of scholars who study religion. She heped produce and appeared in an HBO documentary based on her stories, “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” by the filmmaker Alex Gibney.
JAWEED KALEEM is the national race and justice correspondent at the Los Angeles Times, where he writes about how race and ethnicity shape our evolving understanding of what it means to be American. He frequently reports on policing, civil rights, immigration, prisons and religion, among other subjects. At The Times, his reporting has taken him to Virginia to write about controversies over Confederate monuments, Texas to tell the story of the nation’s only Spanish-speaking mosque, Montana to cover debates over refugee resettlement, and Michigan to explore the rise of black police chiefs. Before joining The Times, Kaleem was the senior religion reporter at HuffPost for five years. From 2007-11, he was a reporter for the Miami Herald. He attended Emerson College in Boston and grew up in Northern Virginia.
ILYSE MORGENSTEIN FUERST is assistant professor of religion and the director of Middle East studies at the University of Vermont. She earned her BA in Religion and Asian Studies at Colgate University; a MTS at Harvard Divinity School; and a PhD in religious studies (with an emphasis on Islamic Studies) at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her published work addresses South Asian Islam, theories and history of religion, and the racialization of Islam. Her first book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion, was published by I.B. Tauris in 2017.
SIMRAN JEET SINGH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Trinity University. He is the Senior Religion Fellow for the Sikh Coalition and a Truman National Security Fellow for the Truman National Security Project and holds graduate degrees from Harvard University and Columbia University. Simran is a prolific writer who contributes frequently to various news outlets and digital platforms. He has become a consistent expert for reporters and news outlets around the world in television, radio, and print media. Dr. Singh also serves on the board for the Religion Newswriters Association, the premiere organization for religion journalists in the country. Simran’s academic expertise focuses on the history of religious communities in South Asia, and he has taught at Columbia University and Trinity University on Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, and Sikh traditions. Simran’s recent scholarship and public engagement examines xenophobia, racial profiling and hate violence in post 9/11 America. He is currently working on two books for publication – one explores the intersections of race and religion in modern Islamophobia, and the other historicizes the formation of the Sikh tradition around the earliest memories of its founder, Guru Nanak. In addition to his academic and media commitments, Simran speaks regularly on a variety of topics related to diversity, inclusion, civil rights, religion, and hate violence.