by 
Islamophobia 
and 
Islamophobic 

incidents on campus.

Alsultany is also known for her book 

“Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race 
and Representation after 9/11,” published 
in 2012, and for her work co-editing “Arab 
and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, 
Violence, and Belonging” and “Between 
the Middle East and the Americas: The 
Cultural Politics of Diaspora.”

At an event celebrating the scholarship 

of 
Alsultany 
last 
Thursday, 
several 

students, 
colleagues 
and 
faculty 

members spoke about their experiences 
working with Alsultany. Aside from 
her academic accolades, the panelists 
spoke of Alsultany’s work to expand and 
improve campus prayer rooms, her role 
in arranging a closed town hall meeting 
for Middle Eastern, North African and 
Muslim students following the murder of 
three Muslim students at the University of 
North Carolina, Chapel Hill in February 
2015, her advocacy for the ME/NA box to 
be included on all University forms that 
require demographic information, and her 
work in organizing the first Islamophobia 
speak-out.

June Howard, faculty member in 

English, American culture and women’s 
studies, admired Alsultany’s kindness 
and perseverance with these challenging 
topics.

“She is a deeply beloved person here 

at the University of Michigan broadly 
and certainly in the department of 
American Culture and AMAS,” Howard 
said. “Whatever good we do in the future 
because we will be following in Evelyn’s 
footsteps.” 

Marjorie Horton, former assistant dean 

for undergraduate education in LSA, said 
Alsultany has demonstrated expertise 
and commitment to diversity, teaching 
and leadership.

“We all know Evelyn as a professor 

who is truly exceptional in caliber and 
impact of her contributions in all domains 
to our college, the broader campus 
community and nationally, and most 
importantly, to our students individually 
and collectively,” Horton said.

Law student Areeba Jibril said through 

Alsultany’s course, “From Harems to 
Terrorists,” she learned the language she 
needed to address Islamophobia in the 
classroom and in the community.

“I heard so many good things about 

(Alsultany’s course), I was going to save 
it for my senior year and I’m so glad that 
I didn’t, because finally I found a space 
where I could walk in and feel seen.”

Later, Alsultany spoke with The Daily 

about her journey at the University of 
Michigan, and what she’s looking forward 
to in her new post.

TMD: Take us through your journey 

at the University of Michigan. From 
teaching, 
mentoring, 
administrative 

work, advocacy, diversity work and more 
— had you imagined it would be this way, 
and what has been the most rewarding?

The seed was planted when I was 

an undergraduate student here in the 
early 1990s and it was planted through 
the classes that I took in ethnic studies 
and 
women’s 
studies 
that 
I 
found 

transformative 
in 
terms 
of 
how 
I 

understood my own identity in relation 
to the social and political world. So, as 
an Arab American, Muslim American, 
Latina, I had access to Latino studies 
classes that were meaningful to me, but 
in order to learn about Arabs or Muslims, 
a student — which is common at many 
universities — would take Middle East 
studies classes and you’d learn about Arab 
countries. I took Islam 101, and these are 
very important classes, but I was looking 
for something in particular at the time 
and those classes weren’t filling that thing 

I was looking 
for. 
There 

seemed to be a 
gap in terms of 
understanding 
the experiences 
of 
Arabs 
and 

Muslims in the 
U.S. 
context 

and filling that 
gap 
is 
what 

has shaped my 
scholarship 
on 
the 

racialization 
of 
Arabs 
and 

Muslims 
in 

the 
U.S. 
and 

it also shaped 
my 
teaching 

and my service 
work.

I was hired 

here in 2005, 
it 
was 
10 

years 
after 
I 

graduated and I 
never imagined 
that when I left 
here in 1995 I 
would become 
a 
professor. 

I never imagined I would become a 
professor here. I never imagined that I 
would help to build an Arab and Muslim 
American studies program. So, I guess my 
message to undergrads is you really don’t 
know where your future is going to take 
you and especially when you’re graduating 
from here. But I never imagined that I 
would have this incredible opportunity 
to bring my dream to fruition and create 
an Arab and American studies program 
along other ethnic studies units in the 
Department of American Culture and 
also, as I mentioned yesterday [during 
the celebration event], I didn’t do it alone. 
Nadine Naber was a professor here. She 
was hired in 2003. I was hired in 2005. 
She’s now a professor at the University 
of Illinois in Chicago and we had a very 
similar vision and together created what 
the program is today. We created courses, 
internship opportunities, programming, 
we piloted a certificate program that 
eventually led to the minor, which is now 
only one of three of its kind that look at 
Arabs, Middle Easterners and Muslims 
in the U.S. context, and the other two are 
U-M Dearborn and San Francisco State. 
I’ll add that the most rewarding thing has 
been working with students for whom the 
classes and minor are meaningful. There’s 
a synergy that happens between what this 
minor is trying to do, what the classes are 
trying to do and then the students who are 
really looking for that thing. So it’s been 
rewarding to offer learning opportunities 
that will help students thrive in the very 
difficult world that we’re living in, and 
also an academic home for Arab and 
Muslim students on campus, and it’s also 
been very rewarding to work with them 
on creating a more inclusive campus.

TMD: After all this time — both as a 

student and now a faculty member — how 
does it feel to be leaving the University of 
Michigan?

I’ve been going through a grieving 

process, and when I first accepted the job 
at USC, I felt really, really sad. Everyone 
was congratulating me and I … I just felt 
this extreme sense of loss. I had accepted 
this incredible opportunity and I was 
just feeling sad all the time. And when I 
tell people that I felt sad, they would say, 
“Well why don’t you just stay? Just stay. 
Cancel the acceptance and just stay here.” 
But the point is that it’s hard to leave a 
place that’s been so formative to who I 
am and it’s been a place where I’ve — I 
didn’t come here an expert, I became an 
expert in my field, I became the director 
of a program, I grew into some leadership 
positions, I developed my teaching. So 
it’s really hard to leave, especially the 
program that means so much to me, and 
my incredible colleagues and students, 
but I am also proud to leave with the Arab 
and Muslim American studies program 
in such a strong position and to have 
contributed something to this campus 
that some students find meaningful and 
who will be able to continue to benefit 
from it after I leave.

TMD: You’ve been at the University 

through a number of tumultuous and 
challenging times, and students, faculty 
and staff have all cited your strength, your 
advocacy, your willingness to be a mentor 
throughout those times, and of course, 
year-round, too. So what are your primary 
motivations for this work, specifically in 
these particularly challenging times?

In the years that I’ve been here, every 

year, some kind of crisis happens. And I 
think that’s common at college campuses 
across the nation that are reflecting the 
urgent social political issues of our time. 
Over the years, a student would come to 
me with an issue and say something like, 
“We’re 

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“My message to 

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don’t know where your 
future is going to take 

you and especially when 
you’re graduating from 

here”

CL A SS OF 2018

PROF
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