What is the Status of the Islamic Studies Program?

Swarthmore College’s Islamic studies program has been left without a program coordinator or administrative assistant, raising questions regarding the status of the program. A Title VI complaint filed on Oct. 29 against Swarthmore by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) mentioned the program’s suspension as part of alleged college discrimination against Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students. A Phoenix investigation revealed significant discrepancies regarding administrators’ and faculty members’ criteria as to what determines a program’s active status. As part of its investigation, The Phoenix contacted the registrar, the previous program coordinator, and the academic dean responsible for an external review of the program. Associate Professor of Religion Tariq al-Jamil previously served as faculty coordinator of the Islamic studies program, but stepped down last year after seventeen years in the role. He continues to teach as a religion professor. He said with no faculty coordinator, event funding, advising capacity, or ability to enroll new students, the program is functionally inactive. However, the academic dean and Swarthmore communications wrote to The Phoenix that the program was still active, evidenced by its active website, enrolled students, and upcoming courses in other departments that are affiliated with the program, despite CAIR complaint’s claim.

“Simply having classes being offered from the context of [other] academic departments does not constitute an academic program,” al-Jamil wrote in an email to The Phoenix. 

“At the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year, the [Islamic studies] program was left without a Coordinator and the College Provost chose not to appoint a new one,” al-Jamil continued in an email to The Phoenix. “I have no idea how an academic program can still be active without a coordinator or participating faculty members.”

Professor al-Jamil said there is no event programming and budgeting for this year. Additionally, without a coordinator to review sophomores’ plans or seniors’ final theses, new students are unable to be accepted into the program. It is unclear how eventual final theses will be approved without a current coordinator. 

The registrar’s office confirmed there are students enrolled in classes affiliated with the program and courses available for registration in upcoming semesters. They referred The Phoenix to the administrative assistant for Islamic studies. However, there is no current administrative assistant for Islamic studies. The employee who was indicated as being such is the administrative assistant for the religion department, and only formerly held this position for Islamic studies. The former Islamic studies administrative assistant then directed The Phoenix to al-Jamil. Faculty whose courses are still affiliated with Islamic studies who were consulted by The Phoenix were unsure about the status of the program. The website for Islamic studies does not list an active coordinator or administrative assistant, whereas other interdisciplinary programs such as interpretation theory and gender and sexuality studies do. 

Swarthmore Vice President for Communications and Marketing Andy Hirsch told The Phoenix in an email that the college is considering recommendations from the external review of the Islamic studies program conducted during the 2023-24 academic year by Devin Stewart, chair of the department of Middle East and South Asian studies at Emory University; Najam Haidar, chair of the religion department at Barnard College of Columbia University; and Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, professor of religion at Carleton College. The specific content of the external review was not immediately available to The Phoenix. 

Standard protocol at Swarthmore requires reviews of academic programs every eight to twelve years. Reviews are meant to examine student experiences, departmental goals, curriculum, and other concerns, according to Swarthmore’s website. In this process, as was the case with Islamic studies, three external reviewers are brought in and examine strengths, weaknesses, curriculum, and student experience. Reviews produce reports on their findings, which are kept confidential from the larger community, according to Cat Norris, associate dean of the faculty for academic programs and research and associate professor of Swarthmore psychology and neuroscience, who coordinated the review of the Islamic Studies. The findings are shared with the president, provost, dean of faculty, and, in the case of Islamic studies, the program coordinator, who is encouraged to share it with affiliated faculty.

The alleged elimination of the Islamic studies program was not a principal component of the Title VI complaint, according to Adam Alaa Attia, legal director at CAIR in Philadelphia, but was an element of the alleged hostile environment towards the Palestine, Muslim and Arab community at Swarthmore. CAIR heard the program had been eliminated through faculty and students, and Attia says questions over the program raise suspicions that educational opportunities are being limited in a discriminatory way. The CAIR complaint reads, “After years of hostile behavior to Muslim faculty members who oversaw the Islamic Studies Program, this year Swarthmore has chosen to discontinue the Islamic Studies Program entirely.” 

“Across college campuses, a lot of the students who take classes [in Islamic Studies programs] are Muslim students trying to learn about Islamic history that’s not provided in the general K-to-12 public school system here in the United States,” Attia said in an interview with The Phoenix. “Eliminating that is somewhat of a removal of Islamic history, the history of some of the students that are attending Swarthmore. Muslim students don’t have a lot of outside organizations on campus. Most of the time, Islamic studies programs at different colleges serve in that capacity as a middle point between the students and the outside world, getting introduced to other Muslim educators [and] other Muslim professionals.”

Attia also pointed to the way Swarthmore denied the Title VI complaint’s allegations without a longer investigation. 

“We wrote a list of grievances to the administration, and within a day of receiving the email, the administration said that there is no discrimination and that they take offense to any allegations,” Attia said. “But we did the research. We’ve interviewed numbers of students, numbers of faculty members and the complaint is based off of what they provided to us.”

CAIR was never able to meet with the Swarthmore administration following communication over email starting in June 2024. They are still working with students and faculty at Swarthmore, and are hoping to collaborate with the administration on anti-discrimination training and policy review, if the administration is willing.

Attia also referred to the report’s allegations that Swarthmore has been particularly harsh in their discipline of student protestors, compared with other colleges CAIR works with, and has treated Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students differently than past student protestors. 

“I think that’s something that a lot of the colleges are not understanding, not just Swarthmore, a lot of colleges may be thinking that they’re just doing everything by the book, but when you’re only applying the book to the Arab, Muslim, Palestinian students, they feel specifically targeted when they’re the only student populations that are receiving as much discipline as they possibly can,” Attia said. “The students across universities across Pennsylvania really feel like their administration is targeting them. Other colleges have tried to have meetings with the students, trying to break that trust gap, chip away at it a little bit, where it seems like Swarthmore, each move that they take seems to just further and expand the trust gap between the Muslim students and the administration.”

The Phoenix will continue to follow the status of the Islamic studies program, including how current majors will write their theses, and developments regarding funding and appointed program faculty.