The center is an interdisciplinary program in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, dedicated to the study of the modern Middle East and the geo-cultural area in which Islamic civilization prospered, and continues to shape world history.  The center at the University of Arkansas includes professors in a variety of disciplines.

Karim was an assistant professor in the department of philosophy and religious studies at Spelman College in Atlanta. She was reared in an African-American Muslim community. Her expertise is on race, gender and Islam; younger Muslims in the U.S.; and connections and tensions among African-American Muslims and immigrant Muslims in the U.S.

Zaheer Ali is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University researching 20th-century African-American history and religion; he is project manager for Columbia’s Malcolm X Project.

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University. Tribe’s areas of expertise include abortion and church-state issues. He wrote the book Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes.

Roland D. Martinson is a professor of children, youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. He has written books on parenting and youth ministry and has been involved with the Faith Factors project, a longitudinal study of the factors that lead young people who are Lutheran and Baptist to remain involved […]

The Muslim Alliance in North America is a national network of masjids, Muslim organizations and individuals committed to work together to address certain urgent needs within the Muslim community.  They are especially concerned with issues affecting indigenous Muslims. Contact: Siraj Wahhaj.

Jennifer Dalven is director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, which has been involved in the debate over health care workers refusing to provide services to women. Contact her through the media line.   

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is director of Organs Watch, a human rights documentation center that tracks the ethical and legal uses and sources of transplant organs globally. Scheper-Hughes is also a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.