For a foreign policy wonk like me, last night’s Democratic debate was particularly interesting to follow. Clinton and Sanders engaged in rigorous debate over Henry Kissinger, the Domino Theory, Nixon opening China, Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and many more subjects that I studied in college as an International Relations major. When Bernie yelled that Kissinger is not his friend, I felt the urge to throw donuts at students at the library in celebration of the awesome one-liner. All they had to... Read more

I was traveling abroad last week when President Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore. This was not his first visit to an American mosque, but it was the first during his presidency*. I finally had the chance to watch his full speech and read some commentary about the mosque visit. I rounded up a list of opinions, articles, interviews, and multimedia of the President’s visit that I’ve shared below. Barack Hussein Obama is a man who was smeared as “a Muslim” from the... Read more

We have birthright citizenship in this country. That means that when I was born on a wintry, late November night to Sudanese parents living in Michigan on student visas (go, Spartans!), I was granted automatic US citizenship. Days later, my parents had their first ever Thanksgiving meal with hospital staff and other new parents whose babies were in NICU. Today, my family are naturalized American citizens. My mom is a school teacher who has empowered hundreds of teenage girls in... Read more

My Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of friends and acquaintances wondering if they should replace their headscarves with hoodies. Muslim women afraid that they will bear the brunt of violent Islamophobic backlash to the San Bernardino shootings, as we have borne the brunt in most Islamophobic backlashes. I’m sad and angry on your behalf, my dear Muslim sisters, that so many of you fear for so much for your safety that taking off your hijab seems like a viable option. Islamophobia... Read more

The story America likes to tell about herself is full of rugged individuals. A family of pioneers heading west to make a new life for themselves. Two young men road tripping across the country searching for God. Wearing rags and dreaming of riches. Pulling bootstraps. That’s our mythology, anyway, immortalized by national storytellers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac, and reinforced every year by literature teachers in high schools everywhere. Anyone can make it if they work hard enough... Read more