In the wake of the massacre in New Zealand, a reflection on the need to confront hatred, to come together as one human community and to learn that our difference is the formative experience of existence on earth.

Reflections on the Supreme Court during the Trump Presidency as the tattered clothes of National Security conceal the viciousness of partisan politics and xenophobia. 

Who—in this shamelessly visual age—would bother to read an analysis of the Muslim world’s modern history when ISIS is swamping social media with ghastly short videos whose impact on viewers is often irrevocable? What can my apologetic writings change if the Pandora’s Box of fear has been opened and is indiscriminately spreading poison?

What is wrong with our current “administrative state” to deserve this new call for deconstruction? Deconstruction entered literary theory in the 1970s as a rigorous tool for self-critique. This, however, is not Bannon’s idea of deconstruction. 

This is a time when we must heed the lessons of the Holocaust, revere the memories of Japanese-Americans, and venerate the integrity of the Judiciary. We must understand patriotism as the relentless defense of civil liberties and as an unyielding resistance to the normalization of discrimination, numbness, cynicism, and detachment.

Despite its divisive intent, the Muslim Ban has brought people from diverse ethnic, religious, and sexual backgrounds together to reject the hate lying behind this policy.