Najam on Geo TV on 2016 U.S. Elections
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was one of the featured guests in a U.S. Presidential Elections special discussion on Geo TV News, Pakistan’s largest cable news network on November 4, 2016. Najam discussed the role of Muslims Americans in the forthcoming elections.
Najam pointed out that the increased and divisive focus on Muslims in the run-up to this year’s elections has led to Muslim-Americans, and particularly young Muslim-Americans, becoming more interested and active in electoral politics.
“There is a distinct realization that they need to become part of the mainstream political dialogue, and quickly,” Najam said.
Najam pointed out that while Muslims in general and Pakistanis in particular have had notable success in electoral politics in Europe, especially the United Kingdom, one should not expect a similar trajectory in the United States because there are no major concentrations of Pakistani and Muslim populations in the U.S. However, Najam noted that not being in electoral office does not mean that they are not playing a role and having their voice heard in American politics. Such influence, he argued, comes also from political mobilization and becoming part of local political dialogues.
Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School and was a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore Pakistan. Part of his research has focussed on Muslim and Pakistani diaspora in the United States. He is the author of Pakistanis in America: Portrait of a Giving Community (Harvard University Press, 2006) and co-editor of How Immigrants Impact their Homelands (Duke University Press, 2013). Learn more about him here.