As we approach the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11, today we turn our attention to the five-trillion-dollar “war on terror” and the construction the racialized terrorist in the American imagination with professor Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire.

Deepa Kumar is a professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, where she researchers Islamophobia, empire, culture, gender, race, class in the media, neoliberalism, labor, and social class. She is the author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire (Haymarket, 2012). Her latest article, “Terrorcraft: Empire and the Making of the Racialized Terrorist Threat,” is available here.

Cover photo by Aidan Bartos on Unsplash