The Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Engagement sponsors the Power of Diversity Lecture Series to inspire campus dialogue, community engagement and civic education and learning about the national narrative on diversity and inclusion.
Homayra Ziad, director of campus partnerships at Interfaith America, will present on “Muslim/Arab Identity and Islamophobia” at the next event in the series Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Tinkham Veale University Center, Ballroom A.
Ziad is a longstanding interfaith practitioner and educator. After receiving her doctorate in Islamic Studies at Yale University, Ziad served as assistant professor of Islam at Trinity College in Hartford and then scholar of Islam at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, a Baltimore interfaith organization.
Most recently, she was senior lecturer in Islamic studies and a community-engaged teaching fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where she received a teaching award and supported religious and other diversity efforts on campus. Ziad also served as board president of the ACLU of Maryland.
For two decades, she has co-created projects that connect religion with the arts, public health and mental health and supported educators, activists, artists and religious leaders in navigating pluralism and fostering networks of social change. She was founding co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Interreligious and Interfaith Studies Group and is co-editor of Words to Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis Press, 2018). Ziad writes for academic and popular venues, and consults for film and media.