Campus Directory

Pronouns he, him, his, himself

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Education Department

Title Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies Education & Civic Education

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Web Site

Primary Office Location McHenry Library
3124

Mail Stop Education Department

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D. Education, University of California, Los Angeles

Ed.M.  Education, Harvard University

B.A. Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

Research Interests

Arshad I. Ali is an educator, community worker, and scholar who studies youth culture, race, identity, and politics. He is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies Education and Civic Education at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Ali’s research examines the construction of racial identities through exploring questions of democracy, liberalism, and modernity in the lives of youth. He has written extensively on issues relating to the cultural geography of Muslim student surveillance, citizenship, governmentality and other issues of coloniality and Muslims in Western spaces. His current project draws upon Muslim and non-Western storywork and ways of knowing to explore how elementary students engage a science curriculum that appreciates multiple, and culturally sustained ways of understanding and engaging science.

Awards, Honors and Grants

2023. Spencer Foundation Conference Grant. Creating Public Methodologies for Reimagining Histories: Toward Justice and Transformative View of the Possible in Education.  (co-PIs: Arshad Ali, Miwa Takeuchi (University of Calgary), Natalie Davis (GSU))

2022-2023. Spencer Foundation Research Communication Grant. Muslim Ways of Knowing: A Curricular Exploration. 

2021-2022. Visiting Faculty Fellow. Institute for Urban and Minority Education. Teachers College, Columbia University

2020. Hadi Initiative Research Grant. Muslim Undergraduate Student Support and Campus Climate.  

2020. University Research Mentorship Award. The George Washington University      

2019. Spencer Foundation Small Grant Program (2019), Academic Participation, Campus Climate and Democratic Engagement Among American Muslim College Students. 

2015–2019. Faculty Fellow, Institute of Urban and Minority Education. Teachers College, Columbia University

2018.  Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion Mid-career Peer Mentoring Grant. co-PI Martin Nguyen (Fairfield College); Hussein Rashid (CUNY); Arshad Ali (GWU); Sylvia Chan-Malik (Rutgers). 

2014–2018. Visiting Research Associate. Centre for Research and Evaluation of Muslim Education. Institute of Education, University College London

2017.  Spencer Foundation Small Grant Program, Unequal Citizens: Documenting the Civic Lives of American Muslim Immigrant Youth. (Co-PI Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, (Rutgers) & Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher (University of Pennsylvania) Co-I’s: Arshad Ali (GWU), Michelle Fine, (Graduate Center, CUNY); Roozbeh Shirazi, (University of Minnesota)

2016. Early Career Award. Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific American Special Interest Group (REAPA-SIG). American Educational Research Association.

Spring 2016. Scholar-in-Residence, Harvard College

2013–2016. Associate Member, Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies.  School of Oriental and African Studies, London

2011. New Scholar Travel Award, Council on Anthropology and Education. American Anthropological Association

2008–2010. Muslim Studies Working Group Co-director, Center for New Racial Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

2008–2009. Visiting Fellow, Center for New Racial Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Selected Publications

Edited Books

Ali, A. I. & McCarty, T. (2020). Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies of Praxis and Care. New York: Routledge. 

Ali, A. I. & Buenavista, T. L. (2018). Education at War: The Fight for Students of Color in America’s Public Schools. Bronx: Fordham University Press.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Curtis, S.J. & Ali, A.I. (in press). Surveillance in Education: Implications for Research and Practice. In E. Montaño & D. Martinez (Eds) Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education, Volume on Research Methods. Bloomsbury.

Talbert, R. & Ali, A.I. (2024). Accountable to Whom: Relational Accountability in Social Research. Anthropology & Education Quarterly. 55(3). 276-290. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12495

Ghaffar-Kucher, A, Abu El-Haj, T. Ali, A.I. Fine, M., Shirazi, R. (2021). “Muslims are Finally waking Up”: post-9/11 American immigrant youth challenge conditional citizenship. Ethnic and Racial Studies. DOI:10.1080/01419870.2021.1957491

Durrani, M. & Ali, A.I. (2021). Islamophobia as/and Racism: Understanding Education and Muslim Youth Through the Imperial Optic. In H. Rashid & H. Mohibullah. Bloomsbury Religion in North America. London, UK: Bloomsbury.

Rana, J., Alsultany, E., Deeb, L., Fadda, C., Abdul Khabeer, S., Ali, A., Daulatzai, S., Grewal, Z., Hammer, J., & Naber, N. (2020). Pedagogies of Resistance: Why Anti-Muslim Racism Matters. Amerasia Journal.DOI: 10.1080/00447471.2020.1761278

Ali, A. I. (2020). Outsider Citizens Within U.S. Empire: Muslim Youth, Race, Religion, and Identity. In D. Yoo & K. Joshi (Eds.). Envisioning Religion, Race and Asian Americans. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Ali, A.I., & McCarty, T.L. (2020). Centering Critical Youth Research Methodologies of Praxis and Care. In A.I. Ali and T. McCarty (Eds.). Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies and Praxis. New York: Routledge. Vanderbilt, S. & Ali, A.I. (2020). Community Engagement and Meaningful Trust as Bedrocks of Well-Crafted Research. In A.I. Ali and T. McCarty (Eds.). Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies and Praxis. New York: Routledge.

Ali, A. I. (2019). The Campus as Crucible: A Critical Race Analysis of Campus Climate in the Experiences of Muslim Undergraduates. Teachers College Record, 121(5).

Ali. A. I. (2019). Off the record: Police surveillance, Muslim youth, and an ethnographer’s tools of research. Equity & Excellence in Education, 51(3–4). 431–449. DOI:10.1080/10665684.2019.1584545

Chan, C., Steen, S., Howard, L., & Ali, A. I. (2019). Disentangling the Complexities of Queer Theory and Intersectionality Theory: Research Paradigms and Insights for Social Justice. In K. K. Strunk & L. A. Locke (Eds.). Research Methods for Social Justice and Equity in Education (pp. 59–70). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ali, A. I. (2018). Learning in the Shadow of the War on Terror: Toward a Pedagogy of Muslim Indignation. In S. Daulatzai & J. Rana (Eds.), With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections of Race, Muslims, and U.S. Empire (pp. 244–257). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ali, A. I., & Buenavista, T. L. (2018). Toward an Anti-War Pedagogy: Challenging Materialism, Militarism, and Racism in Education. In A. I. Ali & T. L. Buenavista (Eds.), Education at War: The Fight for Students of Color in America’s Public Schools (pp. 1–28). Bronx: Fordham University Press.

Ali, A. I. (2017). Trumpal Fears, Anthropological Possibilities, and Muslim Futures. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 48(4). 386–392. DOI:10.1111/aeq.12219

Ali, A. I. (2017). The Impossibility of Muslim Citizenship. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 11(3), 100–116. DOI:10.1080/15595692.2017.1325355

Howard, L. C., & Ali, A. I. (2017). (Critical) Educational Ethnography: Methodological Premise and Pedagogical Objective. In R. Hopson & W. Rodrick. (Eds.), New Directions in Educational Ethnography (Studies in Educational Ethnography) (Vol. 13; pp. 141–163). United Kingdom: Emerald.

Ali, A. I. (2016). Citizens under Suspicion: Responsive Research with Community under Surveillance. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 47(1), 78–95. DOI:10.1111/aeq.12136

Ali. A. I. (2014). Quelling Dissent: Disciplining Liberalism on Muslim College Students’ Speech and Action. Critical Education, 5(18), 1–18.

Ali, A. I. (2014). A Threat Enfleshed: Muslim College Students Situate their Identities amidst Portrayals of Muslim Violence and Terror. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(10), 1243–1261.

Gutiérrez, K., Ali, A. I., & Henríquez, C. (2009). Syncretism and Hybridity: Schooling, Language, and Race and Students from Non-dominant Communities. In M. Apple, S. Ball, & L. Gandin (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Education. New York: Routledge.

Ali, A. I. (2009). Radical Education in the Critical Moment:  Envisioning a Revolutionary Praxis of Language, Teaching and Race in a Time of War. In M. Eryaman (Ed.), Peter McLaren, Education, and the Struggle for Liberation: Revolution as Education. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Selected Recordings

2024. Middle East Knowledge Production in the Aftermath of October 7. Panel 3: Knowledge-Production Amidst (de)Humanization with Drs. Mariam Durrani (American University), Maha Hilal (Muslim Counterpublics Lab), Adi Ophir (Brown University), Arshad Ali (GWU) & Arie Dubnov (GWU).

2024. REEaction: Racial and Ethnic Equity in Action Podcast Series.

2021. International Society of the Learning Sciences Invited Panel: Expanding Conceptions of Learning: Colonialism, Social Movements, and Possible Futures.

With Drs. Thomas Philip, University of California Berkeley (USA) Lucy Avraamidou, University of Groningen (Netherlands) Arshad Ali, GWU (USA) Natalie R. Davis, Georgia State University (USA) Ananda Marin, University of California Los Angeles (USA) Isabel Martins, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) Audrey Msimanga, University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) Miwa Aoki Takeuchi, University of Calgary (Canada) Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University (USA)

2021. Critical Youth Research in Education, book talk with Drs. Arshad Ali, Teresa McCarty (UCLA), Cynthia Benally (Utah), and Kēhaulani Vaugh (Utah)

2017. Harvard Graduate School of Education: Askwith Forum with Arshad Ali, Michael A. Blake, Albino Garcia, Jr., Simran Noor, & Christina Villarreal. 

2016. Jadaliyyah: Status Report Podcast. The panoptic gaze and the ivory tower: Reclaiming academic freedom.

2015. EdFix Podcast: Muslim Youth Identity and the Promise of Public Education