Film Screening // Constructing the Terrorist Threat

Deepa Kumar, one of the nations foremost scholars on Islamophobia, looks at how Muslims have become the predominant face of terror in U.S. news and entertainment media even though terror attacks by white extremists have far outnumbered attacks by Muslim Americans since 9/11. Arguing that racialized threats have long been used to induce moral panics and advance anti-democratic policies, Kumar explores how ruling elites have been raising the specter of Arab and Islamic terror since the 1970s to justify militarism, war, and curbs on civil Liberties.