Race and Rights Podcast
The Race and Rights podcast explores the myriad issues that adversely impact the civil and human rights of America’s diverse Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities here as well as abroad. Host Sahar Aziz (www.saharazizlaw.com) engages with academics and experts that provide critical analysis of law, policy, and politics that center the experiences of under-represented communities in the United States and the Global South.
You can learn more about the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR) by visiting our website at csrr.rutgers.edu and by following CSRR on Instagram @RutgersCSRR and Twitter @RUCSRR
Subscribe to CSRR’s YouTube channel here.
Episodes
38 episodes
The War Economy of the Fragmented Healthcare System in Syria (Episode 38)
In this episode, regional experts of the Middle East share their knowledge about Syria's healthcare system and how it has been affected by years of conflict. Based on research from the book "Everybody's War: Politics of Aid in t...
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42:48
Innocent Until Proven Muslim with Maha Hilal (Episode 37)
Host Sahar Aziz is in conversation with scholar and organizer Dr. Maha Hilal as she unpacks two decades of the War on Terror and its devastating...
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24:48
U.S. Military Aid to Israel During a Genocide in Gaza with Josh Paul ( Episode 36)
Sahar Aziz speaks with Josh Paul about the law, politics, and policies surrounding the United States decades long military aid to Israel and specifically how such aid makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza since October...
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51:58
Global Islamophobia and the Rise of Populism with Audrey Truschke and Ivan Kalmar (Episode 35)
Dr. Audrey Truschke and Professor Ivan Kalmar analyze the alarming global surge in Islamophobic violence and discriminatory policies, particularly in Eastern Europe and South Asia. Our guests explore how economic and political inse...
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48:09
Carceral Apartheid with Brittany Friedman (Episode 34)
Prisons are a microcosm of how carceral apartheid operates as a larger governing strategy to decimate political targets and foster deceit, disinformation, and division in society. White supremacy within the institutional conditions in US prison...
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42:58
ICC Investigation of Biden Administration Officials for Aiding Israeli War Crimes with Sarah Leah Whitson (Episode 33)
In January of 2025, the human rights organization, Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN), made a formal request with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate former U.S. officials President Joe ...
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43:04
Race and Empire: Legal Theory Within, Through and Across National Borders with Asli Bali (Episode 32)
In the Global South, the possibility of a post-imperial reality self-determined by former subjects of the empire has been undermined by the dominant Western narrative that centers “humanitarian initiatives, politics of counterterrorism, and mig...
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32:11
Post-Colonial Legality and Human Rights with Abdullahi An-Naim (Episode 31)
Autonomy and self-determination for all individuals cannot be realized and sustained unless true within every person. Enslavement and dehumanization remain true of citizens of imperial nations so long as they remain true for colonized peoples. ...
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33:04
Race, Women and the Global War on Terror with Sherene Razack (Episode 30)
This episode of the Race and Rights podcast features Professor Sherene Razack discuss how racialized Muslim bodies and gender are constructed by global white supremacy that produces a...
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41:01
Syria and Seismic Shifts in Middle East Politics with Bassam Haddad (Episode 29)
Syria's complex history and politics led to the overthrow of Bashar Al Assad on December 8, 2024 – as unexpected as the Arab Spring revolutions that gripped the Middle East thirteen years earlier. Located at the center of regional compet...
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1:07:48
The Two Faces of American Freedom with Aziz Rana (Episode 28)
Let’s take stock of the American experience within the global history of colonialism – specifically by examining the intertwined relationship in U.S. constitutional practice between internal accounts of freedom and external projects of power an...
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32:26
Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics with Nazia Kazi (Episode 27)
This week’s episode offers a powerful introduction to the scope of Islamophobia in the United States. The legacy of Barack Obama and the mainstream media’s typically negative portrayals of Muslims offer incisive examples into the vast impact of...
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26:54
Hate Crimes, Terrorism and the Framing of White Supremacist Violence with Shirin Sinnar (Episode 26)
In the face of pervasive racial violence in American society, the effort to address and subdue white supremacist extremism has been underserved by the framing of “hate crimes,” and the movement to re-frame these events as domestic terrorism, as...
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28:39
What Lies Ahead for Syria: A Conversation with Dr. Omar Dahi (Episode 25)
A complex array of domestic, regional, and international factors contributed to the rise of Hafez Al Assad as president of Syria in 1970 and the ultimate demise of his son, Bashar Al Assad on December 8, 2024 – thirteen years after the Syrian p...
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53:31
Trauma in Gaza: Palestinian Diaspora Experiences with Ghada Ageel (Episode 24)
In what a growing consensus of international legal scholars describe as a genocide, the sys...
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52:07
The Fall of Syria's Assad Regime: A Syrian American Perspective (Episode 23)
On December 8, 2024, the Syrian people overthrew Bashar Al Assad, bringing to an end a brutal fifty-four-year dictatorship. Although the Syrian people partook in the wave of revolutions during the Arab Spring, their efforts to bring about...
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48:05
The Illusory Peace in the Israeli Palestinian Conflict with Amb. Hesham Youssef (Episode 22)
The present state of the unfulfilled peace brokering process between Palestine and Israel stands to undermine any meaningful progression toward the two-state solution proffered by dominant actors in the West. Host
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27:33
Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians with Khaled Elgindy (Episode 21)
The bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Israel has effectively blinded it to the most detrimental factors to the dissolution of the peace-brokering process, most notably the impact of Israeli occupation on Palestinian sovereignty and th...
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27:05
International Law and Palestine with George Bisharat (Episode 20)
The indeterminate and contested nature of the terms of international law indicate a prevalent concern regarding the legitimacy of international law in the context of Israel’s war with Hamas and the ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip. H...
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42:10
Eyewitness to the Palestinian Genocide in Gaza (Episode 19)
Since October 8, 2023, the Israeli military has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, severely injured over 100,000 Palestinians in ...
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39:53
Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence with Juliane Hammer (Episode 18)
Host Sahar Aziz invites Professor Juliane Hammer to discuss her book
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40:20
Muslims of the Heartland with Edward Curtis IV (Episode 17)
What legal and extra-legal challenges did Ottoman Syrian Muslim immigrants face when they immigrated to the American Midwest before World War I? What opportunitiesdid they have? Join our host Sahar Azi...
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37:29
Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential with Heba Gowayed (Episode 16)
Drawing on a global and comparative ethnography, Professor Heba Gowayed explores how Syrian men and women seeking refuge in a moment of unprecedented global displacement are received by countries of re...
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39:03
Abortion, Religion and Race in Post-Roe America with Asifa Quraishi (Episode 15)
The U.S. Supreme Court's overruling of Roe v. Wade has rightfully triggered a national debate about the role of religion in lawmaking, women's rights to control their reproductive health, and the racially disparate impact of state prohibitions ...
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1:18:20
Muslim Prisoner Litigation: An Unsung American Tradition with SpearIt (Episode 14)
Since the early 1960s, incarcerated Muslims have used legal action to establish their rights to religious freedom and improve their conditions behind bars – ultimately safeguarding the civil rights not only of imprisoned Muslims but all people ...
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40:05