Race and Rights Podcast

There is a critical need for a comprehensive examination of the historical forces that have shaped the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from its colonial origins to the present day. Professor Joseph Massad has meticulously analyzed Western imperial involvement in Palestine, tracing the pivotal events that preceded and followed Israel's establishment. European colonial ambitions and policies have created the foundation for ongoing ...

"Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine" examines the profound concept of sumud—psychological resilience and defiance—within the context of Palestinian life under occupation and settler colonialism. This episode explores psychoanalytic frameworks that illuminate the complex psychological expressions of both individual and collective endurance in circumstances of ongoing trauma and oppression. ...

Islamophobia functions as a transnational political strategy weaponized by both democratic and authoritarian regimes worldwide. The American War on Terror has served as a crucial catalyst, amplifying and connecting anti-Muslim campaigns across continents—from Europe and Asia to the Middle East and beyond. There are striking parallels between seemingly disparate anti-Muslim policies in different countries, exposing how these measure...

Muhammad Ali is widely recognized as one of the greatest athletes of all-time and one of the most important figures of the 20th century. In addition to his long and celebrated career as a boxer and three-time heavyweight champion of the world, Ali changed the conversation about race, religion, and politics in America. Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the U.S. military during the Vietnam War on religious grounds—a profound act of r...

In this episode, we speak with award-winning investigative journalist Azad Essa about his research on the evolving relationship between India and Israel. Our conversation explores the historical development and contemporary significance of this alliance, particularly in light of recent events in Gaza.

Essa discusses how, despite growing grassroots pressure for India to implement an arms embargo against Israel, the Indian government ...

In this episode, Sahar Aziz is in dicussion with Dr. Audrey Truschke and Dr. Dheepa Sundaram about the new groundbreaking report published by CSRR entitled Hindutva in America: A Threat to Equality and Religious Pluralism, which is available for download at csrr.rutgers.edu

Audrey Truschke is a Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Rutgers University-Newark.  She is the author of numerous books about India published ...

In this episode, Professors Nathan J. Brown and Shibley Telhami, leading experts on the region and U.S. foreign policy toward Israel, offer a thoughtful examination of the current situation in Israel-Palestine. Our guests provide nuanced analysis of how decades of unsuccessful peace negotiations have transformed the political landscape.

The conversation explores the increasingly apparent "one state reality" that exists acr...

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 the Syria Crisis," (published by Oxford University Press), our guests provide thoughtful analysis of several important issues:

• The connection between healthcare provision and questions ...

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 impact on Muslim communities. This eye-opening episode, based on Dr. Hilal's book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11, explores how government narratives have been weaponized to build an extensive apparatus of state viole...

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 2023. 

Josh Paul resigned from the State Department due to his disagreement with the Biden Administration’s decision to rush lethal military assistance to Israel in the context of its war on ...

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 insecurities have fueled dangerous scapegoating of Muslim citizens and refugees, transforming vulnerable religious minorities into targets of state-sanctioned persecution. This thought-provoking episode exam...

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 prisons produces a power dynamic of racist intent in the prison system that culminates in what Professor Brittany Friedman terms carceral apartheid. 

Host Sahar Aziz discusses the many shocking disc...

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 Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for their accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaz...

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 migration control”. Host Sahar Aziz will speak with expert, advocate and Law Professor Dr. Asli U. Bali to deconstruct the mainstream narrative that portrays the international system and its dom...

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. This week’s episode explores the contradictions between stated commitments to human rights and actions in Western and post-colonial societies. Host Sahar Aziz addresses these issues with Emor...

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 and sustains networks, affinities and ideas in the so-called Global War on Terror. 

Sherene Razack is a Distinguished Professor and the Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and author of the Not...

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 competition, the nation of Syria will continue to experience foreign intervention from its neighbors, as well as the United States.  Meanwhile, the millions of Syrian refugees outside the country a...

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 and expansion. This episode reinterprets American political traditions from the colonial period to modern times by placing race, immigration, and national security in the context of shifting no...

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 Islamophobia – connected to the long history of racism – both within the borders of the United States, and as a matter of foreign policy and global politics. Host Sahar Aziz addresses these ...