Announcements

Update: This open letter was originally written and submitted as a public comment in response to the initial draft of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, a document which was written by a group of ethnic studies scholars and K-12 practitioners familiar with the field and submitted to the California Department of Education. That draft included…
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Amid the devastating reverberations of the fatal explosion in the port of Beirut on Tuesday, August 4, 2020, the Arab American Studies Association (AASA) is in solidarity with, and in support of, our friends, family, and comrades in Lebanon. The effects of the August 4 explosion on Lebanese communities from all sects and class backgrounds,…
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July 2020 The cascading crisis laid bare by Covid-19 reveals vulnerabilities among and between communities that are deeply entangled, differentially distributed, and stretched across geographical borders. These vulnerabilities have been produced and sustained by deep social inequalities sedimented over many decades. As the Arab American Studies Association has recently underscored, this moment reveals how the…
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Dear President Schlissel and Provost Philbert.  The Arab American Studies Association recognizes that the University of Michigan has played a historic role in supporting research on and by Arab and Muslim American communities. UM students were among the first to join the Muslim Student Association and the group’s first annual meeting was hosted by this…
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The Arab American Studies Association denounces all forms of white supremacy and the policing systems designed to uphold it. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer and in support of nationwide uprisings against state violence and anti-Black racism, we come back to the words of Ruth Wilson…
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The Arab American Studies Association is alarmed by the open racism, bigotry, and rising level of hate crimes perpetrated against Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, People of Color now on display in the United States. We oppose characterizations of groups of people as if they were monolithic, and abhor the use of labels such as terrorist,…
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As the global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to register mounting deaths worldwide, the Arab American Studies Association (AASA) denounces all forms of racism and racial capitalism that render migrants, communities of color, and occupied people everywhere more vulnerable to the illness and to its economic aftermath. The metaphor of contagion has…
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