Throughout my career, I have connected scholarship, teaching, and public service through partnerships that strengthen communities and expand student opportunities. My work brings together universities, community organizations, schools, refugee and immigrant communities, civic leaders, and public institutions to address challenges related to human rights, integration, civic engagement, religious diversity, and social cohesion. As an educator and academic leader, I believe universities have a responsibility not only to generate knowledge but also to contribute meaningfully to the communities they serve.
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Community Partnerships
As an academic leader, I believe universities play an important role in strengthening the communities they serve. Throughout my career, I have developed partnerships with schools, nonprofit organizations, refugee-serving agencies, faith communities, and civic institutions to advance student success, foster public dialogue, and address complex social challenges. These collaborations have expanded opportunities for experiential learning, informed research and scholarship, and created meaningful connections between the university and broader society. Through this work, I seek to build relationships that generate mutual benefit, strengthen civic engagement, and enhance the public impact of higher education.
Landscapes of Belonging: Refugee Experiences in Nebraska and Beyond
As Goldstein Family Community Chair in Human Rights, I initiated a new project, “Refugee Experiences in Nebraska and Beyond.” This project aims to connect local refugee communities to the campus and provide scholarly knowledge on refugees in Nebraska and global refugee trends through research, teaching, and community engagement. The project supports community events, talks, research projects, service learning courses, and course development. For more information, visit the project page.
Dialogue with Muslim Communities in Omaha
As director (2013-2023) of the UNO Islamic Studies Program I organized a series, “Dialogue with Muslim Communities in Omaha,” to stimulate dialogue between local Muslims and the broader Omaha metropolitan community. Funded by Humanities Nebraska, this project brought nationally acclaimed speakers to foster knowledge about American Muslims and facilitated small group discussions after each talk. For more information, visit the project page.
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Community as a Classroom: Experiential Learning
I believe that some of the most meaningful learning occurs when students apply academic knowledge to real-world challenges. Throughout my career, I have developed and supported experiential learning opportunities that connect students with communities, public institutions, and diverse stakeholders. These initiatives encourage students to engage with complex social and policy issues while developing the analytical, professional, and civic skills necessary for leadership in an increasingly interconnected world.
Selected Service Learning Projects
LEARNING THE MIDDLE EAST FROM REFUGEES
In the “Learning the Middle East Politics from Refugees” project in Spring 2020, my students in Government and Politics of the Middle East interviewed Middle Eastern refugees in Omaha to learn insights about government and politics in the region. Each student interviewed one refugee and produced outputs to help the refugee-advocacy efforts of our community partner, Refugee Empowerment Center. The students produced transcripts and analysis of their interviews. Then the students analyzed one another’s interview outputs and submitted their reflections. Finally, they produced short videos to share their experiences of interviewing with the refugees, what they learned about refugee stories, and how these stories help them understand government and politics in the Middle East. These materials will help Refugee Empowerment Center in its refugee advocacy work. The project not only helped students learn Middle East Politics through personal stories, but it also contributed to their competencies in diversity and global cultural awareness.
GLOBAL CITIZENS ACADEMY
Global Citizens Academy is a civic engagement project that aims to bridge the University of Nebraska international students with the community through making them teach about the world in an Omaha area upper elementary school, Montessori Children’s Room. The program helps the elementary students learn more about world geography and understand how interconnected our lives with the world. It helps UNO international students integrate better to the larger community. Every Fall, international students visits the elementary school on weekly basis to talk about their own countries through informal conversations. The international students are provided with engaging materials about the country covered.
For a story about the program, see, “Effort Brings Together Different Cultures, Generations” at UNO News.
STUDENT RESEARCH ON THE TRI-FAITH INITIATIVE
The students in my honors colloquium course, “Sacred and Violent,” in Spring 2018 conducted a semester-long research on the Tri-Faith Initiative. Eighteen students interviewed eighteen leaders and participants from the Tri-Faith Initiative in an effort to understand their motivations to start and continue to support this unique interfaith project. Their findings were compiled into a report that was presented to a full audience, including many of the Tri-Faith leaders who participated in the interviews on April 24, 2018.
INTER-GENERATIONAL CONVERSATIONS ON POLITICS
Intergenerational Conversations on Politics provides a dialogue forum between UNO students and the seniors in the Aksarben Senior Living. Since Fall 2015, I implemented this program for five semesters. Throughout each semester, the students were asked to lead and conduct an hour of discussion with the residents of Aksarben Senior Living on Thursday nights at 6 p.m. The discussions at Aksarben Senior Living carried our class discussions to the community. The students were asked to assign a newspaper article to the seniors related to the discussion in advance. The residents read the article before the discussion took place. After the discussion, the students wrote a reflection paper summarizing the discussion and their experience.
Below are some selections from student reflections:
“Meeting Bruce, Jack, and the ladies to discuss politics was a highlight of my academic year. Older generations offer wisdom and joy that cannot be easily expressed. Sadly, many people in the U.S. seem to forget about the generation that raised them. It is sad for the older people, obviously, but it is also sad that many people are missing out on this kind of relationship. I left the meeting at about 8:00 feeling happy and invigorated.”
“The way they joked reminded me of my grandfather and I really appreciated their enthusiasm and ability to have respectful disagreements. I took a lot away from the conversation and I was amazed at how sharp the seniors were.”
“They were super cool and were genuinely interested in what we thought we had in store with our lives and urged us to leave the world a better place than we found it.”
“After leaving the session, we could not believe how amazing the conversations were. We felt so uplifted and encouraged to know that more people stand together on these social issues in this country than we originally thought.”
“Overall, I found the experience at the Aksarben Retirement Center to be fulfilling and rewarding. Being able to apply my knowledge and understanding of the Middle East to an educated discussion to a well-informed and highly educated group of senior citizens gave me confidence on the material I have learned in class.”
“The interaction with these residents contributed to me by reenergizing hope that there isn’t such a stark divide across generational gaps and that elderly people do care about the type of world they’re leaving behind.”
“I honestly haven’t had a political discussion with someone outside of the academic setting or my close family in years because of the general tone these discussions take anymore. This experience taught me that shying away from these difficult, heavy, and often partisan-tinted discussions is not only irresponsible, but it’s also, quite simply, lazy. By actually sitting down and speaking with these seniors, I found many more shared experiences and perspectives than I thought I might. This made the disagreements we might have had just sticking points to work through using reason rather than insurmountable differences of opinion as they might have been in a digital landscape of relative anonymity.”
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Public Scholarship
I am committed to bringing scholarly research into public conversations about democracy, human rights, religion, migration, and public policy. Through public essays, media interviews, invited talks, and digital platforms, I seek to make academic knowledge accessible to broader audiences and contribute to informed dialogue on contemporary social and political challenges. I am also the founder and editor of Siyasa: A Forum on Islamic and Middle Eastern Politics, which promotes engagement among scholars, students, and the broader public.
Selected Public Scholarship
“Pope Leo XIV’s Visit to Turkey and Lebanon Were About Religious Diplomacy” The Conversation, December 9, 2025.
“Why Syria’s Reconstruction May Depend on the Fate of Its Minorities” The Conversation, December 18, 2024.
“Pope’s Upcoming Visit Brings Attention to the Dwindling Population of Christians in Iraq” The Conversation, March 3, 2021.
“Mubarak’s Lasting Legacy on Egypt’s Coptic Christians,” The Conversation, March 17, 2020.
“Let’s Examine A Key Problem Hampering the Muslim World,” Omaha World Herald, February 7, 2020.
“Christians Have Lived in Turkey for Two Millennia, But Their Future is Uncertain,” The Conversation, November 21, 2019
“A Century of Western Meddling in the Middle East: A Backgrounder,” Siyasa, January 18, 2019.
“Why Give to Charity? What Muslims and Catholics Have in Common,” The Washington Post, February 3, 2016 (with Carolyn M. Warner)
“Turkey: From Conservative Democracy to Popular Authoritarianism,” Open Democracy, December 5, 2016.
“Muslims Maintain Unique Identities within Our American Mosaic,” Omaha World Herald, November 1, 2015
“Fringe Voices Do Not Speak for All,” Omaha World Herald, September 24, 2012
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Service Learning Award
From the Award Ceremony of 2022 Faculty Service Learning Award
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