Editor’s note: The latest installment in our Liberation School interview series focuses on the relationship between Islamophobia and imperialism. Jennifer Ponce de León interviews Nazia Kazi about her work on race and global politics, with a particular focus on how to understand the so-called ‘War on Terror’ and its impact on the Muslim left. Their wide-ranging conversation engages with themes from the new edition of Kazi’s book Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics. It also lays out some of her current research on the CIA and the U.S. National Security State’s alliance with right-wing Muslim forces around the world, a theme she explored in this recent article.
Nazia Kazi is an anthropologist and educator based in Philadelphia. Her work explores the role of Islamophobia and racism in the context of global politics. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stockton University in New Jersey, where she teaches courses on race, ethnicity, immigration, and Islam in the U.S. She is the author of Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, out now in an expanded second edition from Rowman & Littlefield. More information on her work can be found here.
Jennifer Ponce de León is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is also faculty in Latin American and Latinx Studies and Comparative Literature . She is the author of Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War and is Associate Director of the Critical Theory Workshop. More information on her work can be found here.
