Submitted on behalf of Tanya R. Saunders, Dean, Interdisciplinary and International Studies.
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Asma Barlas as Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CSCRE). Dr. Barlas will begin her duties on June 1st.
Dr. Barlas is a full professor in the Department of Politics in the School of Humanities and Sciences and has served as a faculty member at Ithaca College since 1991. She is the author of the acclaimed Believing Women in Islam and a recipient of the internationally prestigious Spinoza Chair in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam.
Dr. Asma Barlas, the Founding Director of the CSCRE when it was established in 1999-00, returned to the position in 2006 to hire faculty, develop two minors now approved by APC, and plan the Center’s annual discussion series on difficult issues, including the challenges of race and its meanings in the 21st Century. The Center offers courses that engage with the experiences of ALANA people who are generally marginalized, under-represented, or misrepresented in the United States as well as in the curriculum.
Noted for her intellectual accomplishments, advocacy on behalf of ALANA people, and commitment to considering the connections between the domestic and the international, Dr. Barlas is poised once again to lead the Center, contribute to the College’s plan for diversity, support student and faculty engagement with life in a dynamic multi-racial and polycultural world, and strengthen understanding of how race and ethnicity shape an individual’s identity and life chances. In cooperation with members of the CSCRE Discussion Series Committee, Dr. Barlas is planning a year-long celebration of the ten years of the CSCRE, a campus-wide interdisciplinary unit within the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies.
Please join me in congratulating Dr. Asma Barlas.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20100428140737777