Amarat Zatuut, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminal Justice
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My interest in the relationship between immigration and crime began with a simple social observation during my doctoral studies at Rutgers. As a first-year foreign student of Arab-Muslim background living in the U.S., I mostly missed the authentic Arabic food I grew up with. After some research, I found myself in a nearby Arab grocery store in the largest Arab ethnic enclave community on the east coast, which also happened to be in one of the most violent cities in the state. As a criminology student, walking through the streets of this high crime, urban deindustrialized city where a large concentration of working-class Arab immigrants lived prompted many research questions about the lived experiences of first-generation Arab immigrants and their American-born children.
To answer these questions, I embarked on a three-year ethnographic study to examine the role of contextual factors (e.g., neighborhood and community context) and social institutions (e.g., family, school, religion) in the acculturation process and delinquency risk of the second-generation Muslim- and Christian-Arab immigrants who lived in this ethnic enclave community. This work became the basis of my book, We Police Ourselves, which is currently under contract with NYU Press.
My latest project was recently funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and aims to build on this work by investigating how recent anti-Islamic sentiment and policies against Muslims in the U.S. have shaped the integration and assimilation experiences of recent Muslim immigrants who live in traditional and non-traditional immigrant destinations.
For more information, click here.
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
A Growing Divide: The Promise and Pitfalls of Higher Education for the Working Class
~Douglas Webber (Economics)
In “A Growing Divide: The Promise and Pitfalls of Higher Education for the Working Class,” I discuss how the market for higher education has evolved for both students and institutions, with a particular focus on the American Working Class. For students, higher education represents the single best financial investment one can make, while at the same time having substantial downside risk. For institutions, growth in inequality across schools mirrors the trend in wealth inequali9ty we see in our broader society. Finally, I provide an overview of how the Great Recession altered the public policy landscape for higher education, and which policy debates will shape the next decade.
I’ve spent my 9+years at Temple focusing on higher education finance/policy because education is arguably the biggest driver of upward economic mobility in our society. The market for higher education is fascinating because it is plagued by every so-called “market failure” imaginable. The upside is that rigorous, policy-oriented research has ample opportunities to both improve the higher ed landscape and meaningfully improve economic outcomes at the same time.
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AWARD OF THE MONTH
Featured this month is Jessica Stanton, Associate Professor of Political Science. Dr. Stanton has been awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF) entitled, “The Global Diffusion of Anti-Terrorism Law and Its Implication for Human Rights.” The award will total roughly $400,000 over the next two years.
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United Nations (UN) Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-sponsored resolution – Resolution 1373 – urging member states to strengthen their anti-terrorism laws, to enhance the ability of domestic courts to prosecture those who finance, support, or carry out terrorist acts. These international efforts to strengthen the global aniti-terrorism legal regime prompted many countries to make significant changes to their domestic laws criminalizing terrorism-related offenses. This NSF-funded project investigates the incorporation of anti-terrorism law into domestic legal systems worldwide and examines the human rights consequences of these laws. Many have debated the impact of anti-terrorism laws on civil liberties, weighing questions about how societies ought to balance respect for individual freedoms with a desire to protect national security. Yet most studies of anti-terrorism laws focus on European countries and great powers such as the United States, China, and Russia. This project is the first to provide a systematic cross-country study of the human rights impact of anti-terrorism laws, offering insights into how governments and intergovernmental organizations like the UN can continue to combat terrorism and associated forms of political violence, while ensuring protections for human rights worldwide.
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