Criminalizing Muslim Youth: Soft Surveillance in Schools

Date: 

Thursday, April 5, 2018 (All day)

Location: 

Longfellow Hall, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
In 2014, the Department of Justice announced that Boston would be the site of a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) pilot; a campaign driven by national security, intelligence, and federal law enforcement agencies that claims to steer people off pathways to “radicalization” or “extremism.” However, CVE is not supported by sound evidence and is instead rooted in discredited theories that “radical” beliefs may predict propensity to commit politically-motivated violence. In practice, it has operated to falsely legitimize discrimination against Muslims by deputizing trusted community leaders — including health professionals, teachers, imams and others — to engage in soft surveillance, reporting others as “extremists” or “vulnerable to extremism”. Join us to learn more about CVE in the US, how it criminalizes local Muslims (especially Somali youth) and the PREVENT mandate that public workers report on radicalisation in the UK (on which CVE is modeled). Speakers: Alim Hasan Islam, Senior Caseworker at CAGE Fatema Ahmad, Deputy Director at Muslim Justice League Nicole Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education at University of Illinois Chicago Moderated by Dr. Aaliyah El-Amin, Lecturer on Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education