Name: Asad Dandia

Recipient Year: 2018|2017

Major: Near (Middle) Eastern Studies

Description: Asad is a teacher, organizer, and student. He is currently the Community Program Coordinator at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY), second faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research (BISR), and an urban studies graduate student at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies (SLU). He holds an MA in Islamic Studies from Columbia University and a BS in Social Work from New York University. He draws from his experience both as an academic and a community organizer to connect theory with praxis on a range of subjects. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the LA Review of Books, and Al-Jazeera English, among other outlets. As a teenager, he cofounded a mutual aid organization called Muslims Giving Back, which was surveilled by NYPD informants, leading Asad to join a historic and successful lawsuit challenging police surveillance of New York’s Muslim communities, forever transforming his life.

School Name: New York University

Sponsor: Batool Javidan Memorial Scholarship|Afzal Family Foundation

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asaddandia/