This year's annual Balgopal Lecture is taking place on Wednesday, April 3rd. Students, faculty, and other guests are welcome to come hear Dr. Maha Hilal present her talk Islamophobia, The War on Terror, and the Rhetorics of State Violence at the Levis Faculty Center, Room 300 from 4:00-6:00 PM. 

Dr. Hilal is a Muslim Arab American and an expert on institutionalized Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and counternarrative work. Her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Newsweek, Business Insider, The Daily Beast, and Truthout, among others. Dr. Hilal is the founding Executive Director of Muslim Counterpublics Lab, an organization that works to disrupt and subvert dehumanizing narratives that are designed and deployed to justify state violence against Muslims, and she is also an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University. Dr. Hilal earned her doctorate in May 2014 from the Department of Justice, Law, and Society at American University in Washington, DC. 

The Balgopal Lecture on Human Rights and Asian Americans is established by a generous endowment from Pallassana R. Balgopal and Shyamala Balgopal in 2007.